What happens to recalled home batteries? New deal will see them recycled

Leading Australian battery recycler Envirostream has signed a deal with South Korean battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution to recycle recalled lithium-ion batteries across the country.

Envirostream, a wholly owned subsidiary of Australian battery materials developer Lithium Australia, announced on Monday an exclusive three-year agreement with LG Energy Solution to provide battery recycling services for all the company’s recalled lithium-ion batteries in Australia.

The nationwide recall affects LG batteries supplied to Australian consumers through multiple retailers from January 2016 onwards, under the brands LG, SolaX, Opal, Redback, Red Earth, Eguana or VARTA; as well as in unbranded systems.

The batteries, manufactured between 2016 and 2019, are at risk of thermal runaway causing fire, and have damaged property in 13 incidents, including a fire that destroyed a house in Victoria, and caused one smoke inhalation injury.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has issued numerous increasingly urgent recall notices, including just last month, warning that almost 5,000 of the 8,000 affected batteries remain installed in homes across Australia.

LG’s new deal with Envirostream replaces a previous contract between the two companies which was announced in late 2022, and is expected to increase collection volumes.

LG Energy Solution already has approximately 6,000 large-format lithium-ion batteries ready for collection, with a further 5,000 anticipated. Together, this represents around 770 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries – or approximately 140% of Envirostream’s total collection volumes in financial year 2023.

“The signing of this Agreement extends the already strong relationship with LG Energy Solution, who shares our vision for sustainable recycling of lithium-ion batteries,” said Simon Linge, CEO and managing director of Lithium Australia.

“We see agreements of this type as key to moving our recycling operations to being cash flow positive and allowing us to grow our capabilities nationally.

“We are pleased that the first of these agreements is with LG Energy Solution and look forward to announcing further agreements with other tier 1 manufacturers.”

Envirostream is capable of recycling all types of spent batteries from products as wide-ranging as electric vehicles, mobile phones, power tools, and energy storage systems.

Its Victorian battery recycling facility aims to recover the maximum amount of resources from all types of spent batteries – around 95% of each unit.

This allows the active components of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, and graphite to be reused as raw materials in the production of new batteries.

With the total tonnage of lithium-ion batteries sold for energy storage systems and electric vehicles continuing to skyrocket – expected to grow anywhere between 10% and 40% year-on-year through 2030 – the need for battery recycling services will only become more important to the sustainability of clean technologies.

Envirostream’s deal with LG Energy Solution provides access to one of the world’s largest battery manufacturers for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage systems, and the largest producer of EV batteries outside of China with a global market share of around 14%.

In addition to recycling LG’s recalled batteries, Envirostream will also have an opportunity to generate further revenue from the contract by selling mixed metal dust back to LG, or other third parties.