India’s POCL boosts green recycling with ACE Green investment

Key takeaways:

• POCL invested just over $500,000 in ACE Green to support green recycling – expanding capabilities and advancing green electrification in battery markets
• ACE Green is prioritizing LFP battery recycling over NCM, expanding operations in India and partnering with Spiro in Africa.
• Lead battery recycling is highly efficient with a 99% US recycling rate, while India’s informal sector handles about 30% of used lead batteries.

Ace Green investment signals shift toward electrification

POCL’s investment in ACE Green Recycling, worth just over $500,000, “signals a positive step in expanding their capabilities and their commitment to a future of green electrification,” a spokesperson for ACE Green said on Tuesday October 7.

The move comes some five years after the two companies announced a project to recycle 40,000 tonnes of Indian lead-acid batteries annually via a zero-emissions technology developed by ACE Green.

POCL operates one of Asia’s largest lead smelters with a capacity of more than 130,000 tonnes per year and is now looking to a more sustainable future in battery recycling, according to ACE Green.

In a filing to the National Stock Exchange of India on October 1, POCL said the investment was “to penetrate into the business of recycling of lead and lithium batteries” used in electric vehicles (EVs).

Green recycling focus: LFP momentum and partnerships

ACE Green Recycling provides modular battery recycling technologies and is now focusing on the recycling of lead and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.

It announced earlier this year that it was expanding its Indian battery recycling operations with an LFP recycling plant in the western port city of Mundra. It then teamed up with African EV battery maker Spiro to recycle materials collected on that continent.

“While we can do both nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) and LFP battery recycling, we’ve put our bets on LFP,” ACE Green chief executive officer Nishchay Chadha told Fastmarkets in an exclusive interview in February.

“There are a lot of people competing for the NCM space in a market that is declining, given that its overall share is reducing, whereas LFP is the rising star in the EV battery space,” he said at the time.

Operational advances: Lead recovery and green recycling innovation

In terms of lead recycling, Ace Green’s facility in Houston, Texas, has also recently added a new system allowing it to directly recover clean alloy metals such as antimony and tin from its battery breaking systems.

A lead battery’s three main components (lead, plastic and acid) are 100% recyclable, and a typical new lead battery is formed of at least 80% recycled material, according to the US-based Battery Council.

The US lead battery industry has a recycling rate of 99% – the highest of any consumer product in the US, according to the Battery Council.

In India, there is a large and growing lead battery recycling sector, but estimates from the International Lead Association show that 30% of the used lead battery market in India is handled by the informal recycling sector.

The global battery recycling market is booming, driven by high demand for key battery materials. Gain a competitive edge in the emerging market with our Battery Recycling Outlook.