Li-Cycle, a rapidly growing battery recycling company, announced on Monday that it will build a facility in France to break down lithium-ion batteries from forklift manufacturer The Kion Group. The new facility, set to open in 2024, will complement similar sites currently under development in Germany and Norway, and will allow Li-Cycle to expand beyond the consumer automobile market.
According to Tim Johnston, Li-Cycle’s executive chairman, “We believe strongly in a regional approach to recycling as our customers begin to localize their own supply chains. Europe continues to be a growth center for electrification, so we are going to continue to grow there.”
The French facility will provide Li-Cycle with a fresh source of batteries to recycle, as the majority of Kion’s 1.7 million forklifts will eventually be powered by lithium-ion batteries. Given their heavy use, those batteries are likely to wear down faster than those powering consumer automobiles.
Li-Cycle’s European plan is based on its successful North American hub-and-spoke network, which features collection and processing facilities across the continent. The French facility will produce black mass, which is essentially shredded battery parts, and ship it to Li-Cycle’s central facility under construction in Rochester, New York for further processing into lithium, nickel and other metals.
The announcement comes less than a month after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Li-Cycle’s battery processing facility in Ontario, underscoring the growing importance of battery recycling for the electrification of Europe’s economy.
