September 12, 2024: Recycling of lithium iron phosphate batteries will continue to remain unprofitable — at least in the near term, according to Emma Nehrenheim, president of Northvolt Materials, speaking to the ICBR conference held this week in Basle, Switzerland.

“The LFP recycle market is relatively immature, there is no realistic business model yet for low grade chemistries,” she said. However, she anticipated that ‘significant price drops will happen in the short term’ but hoped that eventually a solution will be found.

‘[In terms of circularity] We can’t pick the gold [nickel, manganese, cobalt] in the black mass and throw away the rest,” she said.

Mark Stevenson, an international lead recycling expert said: “The problem with disposing LFP batteries as opposed to lead ones is that they contain little of any real value. By comparison, automotive starter batteries, for example, have enough lead metal in them to pay for the cost of putting them in a smelter and make a profit. With LFP the recycling costs far outweigh any value of the metals extracted.”

In the after-presentation discussions, the general impression was that the introduction of the Battery Directive and the related Battery Passport might throw the onus of the cost of the recycling on to the battery manufacturer.

This would inevitably, some delegates said, raise the cost of EV batteries at a time when the price differential between EVs and conventional ICE vehicles was a sticking point with consumers.

Elsewhere in the conference Mina Ha, an analyst with RHO Motion, said that the bulk of LFP recycling around the world was now happening in China. “They’re ahead of the world in experience and cutting the costs of recycling,” she said.