POSCO Holdings has completed the construction of a secondary battery recycling plant for POSCO HY Clean Metal. POSCO HY Clean Metal is a joint venture between POSCO Holdings, China’s Huayu Cobalt, and GS Energy that specializes in recycling secondary batteries.

POSCO Holdings announced on Tuesday that it held a ceremony to mark the completion of POSCO HY Clean Metal’s secondary battery recycling plant in Yulchon Industrial Complex in Jeollanam-do, South Jeolla Province. The ceremony was attended by POSCO Group Chairman Choi Jeong-woo, Jeollanam-do Governor Kim Young-rok, Member of Parliament Kim Hoe-jae, Yeosu Mayor Jung Jung-myung, Gwangyang Mayor Jung In-hwa, Hwayu Cobalt Chairman Chen Xuehua, and GS Energy President Yoo Yong-soo.

“We will continue to invest in cathode materials, precursors, lithium, and recycling to develop POSCO Group into a global leader in secondary battery materials,” Choi said at the ceremony. “Jeollanam-do will become a mecca for secondary battery materials,” said Governor Kim Young-rok.

The newly completed secondary battery recycling plant can process 12,000 tons of black powder annually and recover metal resources such as 2,500 tons of nickel, 800 tons of cobalt, and 2,500 tons of lithium carbonate, which are raw materials for secondary battery materials.

The PLSC (Poland Legnica Sourcing Center) plant, which POSCO Holdings established in Poland in August last year, crushes secondary battery scrap and waste batteries to make black powder, which is supplied to the POSCO HY Clean Metal recycling plant in Yulchon Industrial Complex in Jeollanam-do to extract raw metals for secondary battery materials.

POSCO HY Clean Metal has a process technology that can maximize the recovery rate of raw metals for secondary battery materials, and by-products such as copper and sodium sulfate generated in the process can also be productized to minimize waste generation. The products produced by POSCO HY Clean Metal will be supplied to POSCO Future M’s anode material plant in the same Yulchon Industrial Complex to strengthen the competitiveness of raw material procurement for POSCO Group’s secondary battery materials business.

In particular, through the completion of the secondary battery recycling plant, POSCO Holdings expects to establish an eco-friendly resource circulation system (closed loop) that recovers raw metals from process scraps and waste batteries generated by battery companies and utilizes them to produce secondary battery materials, minimizing carbon dioxide emissions from raw material production processes such as mine mining and reducing costs.