The National News/Business SEP 22 / Read original article
Car makers have been racing to lock in future supplies amid concerns about raw-material shortages that have sent prices spiking
A global rush into battery recycling is good news for car makers worried about future raw material supplies. But the wave of new factories poses a big risk for the recycling industry itself: there’s nowhere near enough scrap yet to feed them all.
Big-name car manufacturers, specialist recycling companies and even miner Glencore are all pouring money into transforming waste into the commodities needed to fuel the electric-vehicle revolution. As a result, global battery-recycling capacity will surge nearly 10 times from 2021 to 2025, and is expected to surpass available scrap supply this year, consultancy Circular Energy Storage has said.
Shortages are likely to persist well into the next decade while the industry waits for early models of EVs to reach junk yards in large numbers, and by 2025 there may be three times more recycling factory space than scrap to run the plants.
Some are already talking about supplementing their plants with freshly mined material — a counterintuitive solution given that recycling is intended to be a crucial and environmentally friendly answer to limited mined production of metals like lithium and cobalt. Car makers have been racing to lock in future supplies amid concerns about raw-material shortages that have sent prices surging in recent months.
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