Suez and Eramet choose Dunkirk for their future battery reprocessing plant

And another factory in Dunkirk. The city and especially the Hauts de France region continue to welcome new factories. And many are linked to the development of electric vehicles. This is again the case this time. Eramet and Suez announced this Friday their decision to set up their future electric vehicle battery recycling plant in Dunkirk. “The battery cluster is in Hauts de France,” explains Marc Ferreol, dismantling director at Suez. We chose to settle near the gigafactories currently under construction.” And there are still four planned today.

The two partners have been working on the project for several years. “Suez is a player in recycling. We offer circular solutions to both communities and manufacturers and it is in this context that we have been working with Eramet since 2019,” explains Marc Ferreol. Eramet is a mining and metallurgical player. “It is very important to guarantee responsible use of our metals, and to be able to recover them at the end of their life,” explains Julien Masson, director of strategy at Eramet. This is why we have developed into metals for electric vehicles, mainly nickel and lithium.”

He had all the more reason to embark on this field as he mastered the technical skills in hydrometallurgy which made this possible. Eramet first carried out tests in its R center

“The first unit will discharge the battery then separate and sort ferrous and non-ferrous metals, plastics and other solvents,” explains Marc Ferreol. In order to produce “black mass”, a powder which contains rare metals. This first factory will be the first to be operational, in 2025. “We have just submitted the building permit application and the operating authorization request,” explains Marc Ferreol. The second unit will take the “black mass”, then, through different successive stages, collect the nickel, manganese, cobalt and lithium it contains. “We are a little out of phase compared to upstream, since we will make the final investment decision at the end of 2024,” specifies Julien Masson. It should then be operational in 2027. “We will support car manufacturers who must reach 65% recycling by 2025: this is why we decided to accelerate the first phase,” explains Marc Ferreol.

Also read What if electric cars were smaller to save lithium?

Both partners are convinced of the potential of this market. The factory will be capable of dismantling 200,000 batteries per year, which allows it to target a European catchment area. However, all the details have not yet been fixed, in particular the exact legal framework of this cooperation. Likewise, the two groups have not yet communicated on the total amount of the investment, nor on the number of jobs created. “We obtained a subsidy of 80 million euros, including more than 60 million from the European Union, for this entire project,” explains Julien Masson. This makes it possible to envisage a total investment amounting to hundreds of millions of euros…