POSCO opens a recycling plant in Poland

POSCO Holdings has completed construction of a PLSC secondary battery recycling plant in Brzeg Dolny, Poland.

The opening ceremony was attended by POSCO Holdings Green Materials and Energy Business Team Leader Byeong-og Yoo, Korean Ambassador to Poland Hoon-min Lim, Governor Janusz Zdziarski, Mayor of Brzeg Dolny Powel Pirek, and officials from clients and partners, such as LG Energy Solutions, GS Energy and SungEel HiTech.

Byeong-og Yoo, stated that “the recycling business is fundamental to the virtuous cycle economics of green batteries, which is the core of POSCO Group’s battery secondary materials business.”

“We will take the lead in corporate social responsibility and ensure the competitiveness of secondary battery raw materials by steadily expanding the recycling business”

POSCO Holdings created secondary battery recycling subsidiary PLSC in March last year in response to the growing market due to the rise of electric vehicles and demands from governments and major customers around the world to mandate the use of recycled materials for secondary batteries.

The company cooperates with SungEel HiTech, a Korean company with proprietary technology for secondary battery recycling, in managing the plant.

The PLSC, completed ten months after its commissioning in October 2021, is a secondary battery recycling plant with an annual production capacity of 7,000 tons.

POSCO takes the first step towards carbon neutrality

It will collect and disassemble scrap and used batteries that come out of making batteries in Europe, producing intermediate goods in powder form. Lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese will be extracted from intermediate goods and supplied to POSCO HY Clean Metal.

Meanwhile, the POSCO Group has been investing in and developing technologies for lithium and nickel, key raw materials for secondary batteries, since entering the business in 2010.

It plans to achieve sales of 41 trillion won by building a stable value chain of secondary materials by 2030, producing 300,000 tons of lithium, 220,000 tons of nickel, 610,000 tons of cathode materials and 320,000 tons of anode materials.