Swedish Northvolt and British EMR team up to open first battery recycling facility in Hamburg

Northvolt, a Swedish battery manufacturer, in partnership with EMR, a British metal recycling firm, has opened a recycling plant in Hamburg, Germany. This facility is a crucial part of Northvolt's recycling strategy, with an expected capacity of processing 10,000 tonnes of battery packs annually.

The Hamburg facility, covering an area of 12,000 square metres in Halskestraße in Hamburg Billbrook, is operated and equipped by EMR, while Northvolt was responsible for planning operations and integrating specially developed battery unloading and dismantling solutions. The facility will discharge and disassemble battery packs and complex traction batteries from electric cars.

EMR will extract high-grade copper and aluminium from the traction batteries, which can be reused to manufacture battery housings for electric vehicles, not the cells. The remaining battery modules will be crushed at Northvolt's recycling facilities to recover plastics, aluminium, and copper. The remaining material, known as black matter, will then be processed at Revolt Ett using the company's Hydromet technology to recover actual battery materials such as lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt. These materials will flow into Northvolt's cathode materials, supporting said on-site battery production.

Revolt Ett will process enough black matter a year at total capacity to meet about half of the raw material demands at the main Ett factory in Skelleftea. The partners stressed that the material they recycle created an "entirely new way of sourcing the minerals needed for battery production" that is more economical and ecologically beneficial than raw material extraction through mining.

Northvolt plans to produce cells with 50% recycled material by 2030 across all operations, with Revolt Ett becoming the largest battery recycling plant in Europe and the only large-scale European facility capable of recycling lithium in addition to nickel, manganese, cobalt, aluminium and other metals. The company reportedly raised an additional $1.2 billion in capital this week to finance its expansion in Europe and North America. The latest capital increase sets Northvolt's debt and equity at more than nine billion dollars.

Northvolt's Chief Environmental Officer, Emma Nehrenheim, exclaimed: "With the Hamburg facility, we are ready to recycle large volumes of European batteries and further our progress in establishing a circular battery industry." She also asserted that EMR is a "world-leading metal recycler and an excellent partner" for the company.

 "We should be mindful that some 250,000 tons of batteries will reach their end-of-life in Europe by 2030," Emma remarked to advertise this strategic partnership as "an opportunity".

If the recycling segment of the entire aluminium value chain excites you then please have a look at AL Circle's World Recycled Aluminium Analysis, which is a detailed report with industry forecasts. 

The Revolt program was announced by Northvolt in 2019, and its labs in Västerås started researching the recycling of NMC and NCA chemicals. In 2021, Northvolt produced its first battery cell with 100% recycled nickel, manganese, and cobalt. The company plans to scale up its recycling facilities in Sweden to recycle 125,000 tons of batteries annually at a full-scale factory called Revolt Ett.