The British recycling company EMR has opened its first UK-based electric vehicle battery recycling centre at its Birmingham facility,
Article continues below
entre is EMR's second such facility. In 2024 EMR opened a site in Hamburg, Germany, in partnership with Northvolt, one of Europe’s largest battery manufacturers.
The Birmingham facility was officially opened on 18 September with a special ceremony attended by some of the largest names in the automotive sector, including partners from the RECOVAS consortium such as Bentley, Jaguar Land Rover, and BMW.
The event marked a significant milestone for the UK’s EV industry, showcasing EMR’s continued leadership in sustainable solutions.
The facility will have the capacity to test for reuse or repair, or process batteries ready for shredding, handling more than 2,000 tonnes of batteries per year.
These high-performance EV batteries will be essential in enabling the automotive industry to decarbonise in the years ahead, so it is vital that they can be sustainably reused, remanufactured, or recycled to safeguard the valuable resources in them, including cobalt, lithium, and nickel.
As the UK’s largest end-of-life vehicle (ELV) recycler, EMR has embraced this challenge as part of its long-standing commitment to sustainability, and investment in groundbreaking technology.
Batteries arriving at the site – initially sourced via product recalls, warranty failures, and end-of-life e-bikes and e-scooters – will be assessed to determine whether the battery pack can be reused in a new vehicle, remanufactured for use in the energy storage sector, or recycled.
The multi-million-pound plant follows EMR's involvement in the RECOVAS consortium, a collaborative research and development project launched in 2020 with grant funding from the Department for Business and Trade via the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC).
The project's aim is to develop the UK's first commercial-scale recycling facility for automotive battery packs. ■
Predominant upper-level ridging stretching from the Southwest to the southern High Plains will allow for another day of record-breaking heat across parts of Nevada and Arizona today.