Mercedes-Benz opens Europe's first battery recycling plant in southern Germany

Mercedes-Benz inaugurated Europe’s first integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical lithium-ion battery recycling plant in Kuppenheim, Germany, which uses the technology of Primobius to recover cobalt, nickel, lithium and other materials for making new battery modules, Primobius said Oct. 22.

Primobius, a 50-50 joint venture between German engineering company SMS Group and Australian company Neometals, commercializes a patented recycling process for end-of-life and scrap lithium-ion-battery cells via a plant supply and technology licensing.

In the project with Mercedes-Benz, Primobius has designed, fabricated and is installing an integrated plant for 2,500 mt/year of high-purity, low-carbon battery materials, for which it was selected as the technology partner in March 2022. The recovered materials will be used to produce more than 50,000 battery modules for new all-electric Mercedes-Benz models.

“Together [with Mercedes-Benz] we will generate high-purity, low-carbon footprint battery materials for reuse in the battery supply chain. I am very proud of the entire team and also the excellent collaboration we established with Mercedes-Benz,” Primobius CEO Michel Siemon said in the statement.

The Primobius-developed recycling concept covers all steps from shredding the battery modules to drying and processing the battery’s active materials. The mechanical process sorts the plastics, copper, aluminum and iron, and the downstream hydrometallurgical process focuses on the black mass -- the main product from the mechanical sorting containing the valuable metals that make up the electrodes in battery cells.

These comprise lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese and are extracted individually in a multistage chemical process designed to produce recycled materials of battery-grade quality that can be used to produce new battery cells.

The shredder in Kuppenheim has been in operation since spring 2024 and final assembly and commissioning of the hydrometallurgical processes will continue gradually after the opening event.

“The reality is that electric vehicles have a very large legacy CO2 footprint from the production phase owing to the whole life carbon emissions associated with the raw materials involved. Electromobility can only be sustainable once we succeed in recovering battery materials in an energy-efficient way. That is exactly what we do with our solutions,” said Siemon, adding that the company is among the first to realize a resource-efficient recycling technology in the heart of Europe.