China’s recyclers eye looming electric vehicle battery mountain

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SHANGHAI: After years of dismantling discarded televisions and laptops, a Shanghai recycling plant is readying itself for a new wave of waste: piles of exhausted batteries from the surge of electric vehicles hitting China’s streets.

The plant has secured licences and is undergoing upgrades to handle a fast-growing mountain of battery waste, said Li Yingzhe, a manager at the facility, run by the state-owned Shanghai Jinqiao Group.

“We believe there will be so much growth in the number of electric vehicles in the future,” he said.

Shanghai Jinqiao will be entering a market that includes Chinese companies like Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium and GEM Co. Ltd, whose share prices have risen as they invest in battery recycling facilities of their own.

That confidence comes even as companies face considerable hurdles launching battery recycling businesses, including high operating costs.

The growth of China’s electric vehicle industry – and the ambitions of recycling companies – is underpinned by a government drive to eventually phase out gasoline-burning cars, part of a broader effort to improve urban air quality and ease a reliance on overseas oil.

Led by companies like BYD and Geely, sales of electric vehicles in China reached 507,000 in 2016, up 53 per cent over the previous year.

The government is targeting sales of 2 million a year by 2020 and 7 million five years later, amounting to a fifth of total car production by 2025.

According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for more than 40 per cent of global electric car sales in 2016, followed by the European Union and the United States.

It also overtook the United States as the market with the greatest number of electric vehicles.

Production in China of the lithium batteries that power those cars has also soared.

In the first eight months of 2017, Chinese manufacturers produced 6.7 billion batteries, up 51 per cent from the year-earlier period, according to industry ministry data. — Reuters