China's battery recycling market soars as power battery retirements surge

The large-scale retirement of power batteries continues to attract numerous enterprises to the battery recycling industry, with the market size projected to surpass 100 billion yuan (approximately 138 billion U.S. dollars) by 2030.

In 2023, the total volume of retired power batteries exceeded 580,000 tons, according to the China Society of Automotive Engineers. This growing volume has drawn various companies involved in recycling retired power batteries through cascade utilization and reprocessing cycles.

In Quzhou, eastern China's Zhejiang Province, the recycled battery packs will be disassembled, with the battery units that show better performance being reexamined and selected for reassembly into new batteries that meet the demands of cascade utilization.

"We will collaborate with partners to gather data on batteries and assess their quality to determine whether they can be used in cascade utilization. The batteries repurposed for cascade utilization are reassembled for applications such as pallet trucks, forklift trucks in factories, and energy storage or solar power integration products," said Bao Wei, manager of a recycling science company in Zhejiang Province.

Many companies in related industries have reported an annual business growth of around 30 percent, accelerating their expansion both domestically and internationally.

"We have two production plants, one in Xiamen and the other in Ganzhou. Both are focused on subdivided sectors that form a closed-loop industrial chain," said Zhu Xiaoming, business director of a recycling company in Xiamen City, east China's Fujian Province.

If retired power batteries do not meet the criteria for cascade utilization, they are sent for reprocessing. In Jingmen, central China's Hubei Province, a battery reprocessing company established last year is capable of processing around 20,000 tons of retired batteries annually. "After separation, the recycling rate of materials increases to over 98 percent. We can completely utilize all of the valuable elements in the batteries," said Wang Jintao, manager of a new material company in Hubei.

According to the manager of this company, the raw materials for their reprocessed batteries mainly come from waste generated by battery manufacturers. The processing capacity of the reprocessing industry currently exceeds the volume of retired batteries available.

"The industry has prepared well in advance to respond to the future boom in battery retirements," said Wang Jintao, manager of a new material company in Hubei.

Latest data shows that the recycling and reuse market for waste batteries is on the rise. It is estimated that the total capacity for cascade utilization and reprocessing in China has surpassed 800,000 tons and 1.8 million tons per year, respectively.

China's battery recycling market soars as power battery retirements surge

China's battery recycling market soars as power battery retirements surge

A former Peruvian congressman said the recent meeting between the leaders of China and the United States in Peru holds great significance for countries around the world, expressing hope that relations between the two sides would be empowered.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden met in Peru during their attendance to the 31st APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Lima.

Guillermo Aliaga, legal expert and former Peruvian congressman, stressed that the meeting has global implications.

"I think that all the meetings that have been taking place here in Peru because of the APEC (summit) have been really important for both big countries. We don't have usually these kind of spaces where both leaders can have meetings and conversations in front of each other. They can talk about multiple things, including, of course, the security around the world. So I think it is really important," he said.

"If we don't have the appearance of both presidents, we might have some problems in order to take actual decisions. From the Peruvian point of view, we think that the presence of the president of China has been really important, especially to do with the new opening of the megaport that we have in Chancay that will have the new route to go to Shanghai," he said.

The Chancay Port, a project on under the China-proposed Belt and Road initiative, opened on November 14 and is set to enhance trade efficiency between South America and Asia, cutting shipping time to China to 23 days and reducing logistics costs by at least 20 percent.

According to Aliaga, the APEC meetings helped spotlight China's investments in the port and other projects in the eyes of U.S. leadership.

"At the same time, the United States has seen that China is investing right now in South America, especially in Peru. So they can talk between each other in order to see what kind of economic relations can be built or improved (between) both countries. Both countries are the biggest ones right now in the economy of the world. The forum of APEC is really important for not only these two countries and their citizens, it is really important also for the citizens around the world. I think that the relations between the two countries need to be empowered," he said.

Former Peruvian congressman hopes for empowered US-China relations