The recovery of waste batteries in China exceeded $5.3 billion last year. The recycling market is expected to surge due to the overlapping demand for securing major minerals.
According to KOTRA Shanghai and Zhongshan Industrial Research Institute, on the 9th, waste battery recovery in China increased from 236,000 tons in 2021 to 415,000 tons the following year. During the same period, demand grew from 591,000 tons to 762,000 tons, and the proportion of recovery to demand exceeded 50% in 2022. Demand is expected to surge to 2,312,000 tons by 2026.
The China Automotive Technology Research Center estimated that the scale of power battery recovery increased from 28 billion yuan (approximately $3.84 billion) in 2022 to 39.7 billion yuan (approximately $5.5 billion) in 2023.
The recycling business also thrives as waste batteries increase and concerns about raw material supply shortages deepen. The China Energy Newspaper analyzed the power battery recycling market size in 2019 to be about 5 billion yuan (approximately $695 million). Registered power battery recovery companies increased by 64% from the previous year to 42,000 in 2022. More than 12,000 companies were registered in the first quarter of 2023 alone.
The China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has announced a list of companies that comply with the “Industrial Norms in Comprehensive Utilization of New Energy Vehicle Waste Batteries” five times. About 150 companies made the list. They mainly utilize the wet metallurgical process.
Representative recycling companies in China include CATL, GEM, MAE, Ganfeng Lithium, and GHTECH. MAE, which realized a process that can extract all metals from lithium batteries, leads the industry in recovery rate. Ganfeng Lithium has created China’s largest waste lithium battery recovery system.
The entry barrier is expected to rise as the recycling business grows and technology advances. Feng Yi, General Manager of China Automotive Data Co., Ltd. (CATARC), advised, “To avoid being phased out by the flow of the power battery market, you need to secure innovative technologies and improve competitiveness through constant research and development (R&D).” A Chinese consulting industry official also emphasized, “The level of process technology and the recycling system need to be improved.”
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