France’s Eramet and Suez pick Dunkirk for EV battery recycling

PARIS (Reuters) – Eramet and Suez have chosen Dunkirk as the location for a planned electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling facility as the partners look to tap into a battery production belt being developed around the northern French port, they said on Friday.

Under their joint venture, mining group Eramet and waste and water company Suez aim to build a plant to dismantle lithium-ion batteries, followed by a second unit to separate and refine metals like nickel, cobalt and lithium for reuse in batteries.

The partners are targeting a final investment decision for the first-stage plant by the end of this year, with a production launch in 2025, and a decision by the end of 2024 for the second plant followed by a launch in 2027, they said in a statement.

Eramet has received an 80 million euro ($85.18 million) grant from the European Union and French state-owned bank BPI towards financing the project, they said.

A pilot plant to test the refining process is about to be launched at Eramet’s research centre near Paris, they added.

Several gigafactories are due to produce batteries in the Dunkirk area as the French government encourages the emergence of a “battery valley” to support EV manufacturing.

Eramet and Suez’s battery dismantling plant will have a processing capacity of 50,000 tons of battery modules per year, the equivalent of 200,000 EV batteries, they said.

Eramet has in recent years shifted its focus towards minerals for batteries, including through a lithium production project in Argentina which is due to launch next year.

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(Reporting by Gus Trompiz; Editing by Jan Harvey)