Redwood Materials is partnering Ultium Cells LLC—the joint battery cell manufacturing venture between General Motors and LG Energy Solution— to recycle production scrap from both their Warren, Ohio and Spring Hill, Tennessee facilities. Materials to be recycled include cathode and anode material as well as cell scrap.
Ultium Cells’ two facilities are each 2.8 million-square-feet operations that expect to produce more than 80 GWh combined of battery cells annually, with Redwood receiving the majority of the scrap from its manufacturing process.
Ultium is already shipping material from Gigafactories in Ohio and Tennessee and the company has a third facility under construction in Michigan. With this latest collaboration, Redwood now has contracts with most of North America’s battery cell manufacturers.
Despite tremendously efficient production rates, cell manufacturing still experiences a 5-10% scrap rate on average. This equates to daily truckloads full of material, and ~10,000 tons of material annually, for Redwood to recycle and remanufacture into critical battery components for cell manufacturing.
Compared to traditional methods of processing mined ore into battery-grade materials, Reedwood’s approach is significantly more sustainable. Redwood uses 80% less energy, generates 70% less CO2 emissions, and requires 80% less water, setting new standards in resource efficiency.
Reedwood’s hydrometallurgy facility, the first commercial-scale nickel “mine” to open in the United States in a decade, not only recycles battery manufacturing scrap into raw nickel and cobalt but also stands as the only commercial-scale source of lithium supply to come online in the U.S. in decades.
In April, Redwood said that it had reached a recycling capacity of 40,000 tonnes, which corresponds to 15 to 20 GWh of battery capacity.
