LG Chem and LG Energy Solution will team up with the North America’s largest battery recycling company, Li-Cycle, to accelerate its market leadership in the battery recycling sector.

 

Regarding this, LG Chem and LG Energy Solution announced that it participated in the paid-in capital increase carried out by Li-Cycle recently, thus procuring 2.6% of its stakes. The total investment is 60 billion KRW, paid by LG Energy Solution and LG Chem evenly at 30 billion KRW each.

 

Li-cycle was established in 2016 and is currently North America’s largest battery recycling company. It possesses specialized technologies in extracting core raw materials for batteries by recycling used batteries.

 

In addition to its equity investment, a long-term supply agreement was also signed to supply LG Chem and LG Energy Solution 20,000 tons of nickel over a ten-year period starting in 2023.

 

This is enough to manufacture 300,000 batteries for high-performance electric vehicles (battery capacity of 80kWh).

 

Nickel that LG Chem and LG Energy Solution will receive from Li-Cycle is ‘recycled metal’ extracted from scrap wastes generated during the battery production process and from waste batteries.

 

In particular, Li-Cycle uses the eco-friendly ‘wet process’ that generates no dust during the extraction process and that reuses 100% waste water to minimize discharge of harmful substances, thereby making it possible to procure competitiveness in ESG during the nickel supply process.

 

By being supplied battery raw materials produced using such eco-friendly methods from Li-Cycle, LG Chem and LG Energy Solution will be able to preemptively respond to environment regulations of the US and EU that are becoming stricter as of late.

 

Meanwhile, LG Energy Solution is strengthening its efforts to build a closed-loop for resources through the recycling and reuse of batteries.

 

For this, LG Energy Solution has decided to construct a closed-loop system for resources in all of its business places around the world by 2025, and is also pursuing various battery recycling and reusing businesses.

 

LG Energy Solution has installed and is operating the ‘EV charging ESS system’ made by reusing waste batteries at the Ochang Plant.