Ascend Elements, SK Ecoplant to build LIB recycling facility in Kentucky

Lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycling and engineered materials company Ascend Elements, Westborough, Massachusetts, is partnering with South Korea-based SK Ecoplant and its e-scrap recycling subsidiary, TES, to build a $65 million LIB recycling facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The 100,000-square-foot facility will disassemble and shred approximately 24,000 metric tons of end-of-life electric vehicle (EV) batteries and gigafactory scrap per year—or approximately 56,000 EV batteries per year.

The companies say construction is scheduled to begin in November of this year, with completion expected in January 2025. SK Ecoplant will be the majority owner of the facility with 64 percent, with Ascend owning 25 percent and TES owning 11 percent. Since 2022, SK Ecoplant has invested more than $60 million in Ascend.

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“We are honored to deepen our relationship with SK Ecoplant on this new, state-of-the-art EV battery recycling facility,” Ascend CEO Mike O’Kronley says. “This is just the beginning of an entirely new industry in the United States. For every new EV battery gigafactory that is built, we will need to build a new battery recycling facility to process manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. This is a capital intensive endeavor, so joint ventures between strategically aligned partners is an ideal way to fund new infrastructure projects.”

According to the companies, the new facility will create approximately 60 jobs and produce around 12,000 metric tons of black mass per year. Black mass is a fine powder that contains the valuable cathode and anode materials inside an EV battery.

The black mass produced at the new facility will help supply Ascend’s nearby Apex 1 engineered battery materials facility, which is currently under construction in Hopkinsville and is expected by the company to be operational in 2024. Ascend adds that the $1 billion Apex 1 project will be North America’s first sustainable cathode precursor (pCAM) and cathode active material (CAM) manufacturing facility. At full capacity, Ascend says Apex 1 will produce enough pCAM for about 750,000 new EVs per year.

Ascend recently closed a $542 million funding round and received $480 million of U.S. Department of Energy grant awards to accelerate construction of the Apex 1 project. The company also operates Base 1, an EV battery recycling facility in Covington, Georgia.