I came across this in my news feed this morning. Seems a joint venture has been established to build a Lithium Ion recycling center locating in the Huron Campus, Endicott.
It's likely they have chosen this spot as our NY lithium Ion battery Gigafactory could be a consumer of the recycled material. This would make our cells even greener imo.
A joint venture will create 86 new jobs at the Huron campus in Endicott to recycle lithium-ion batteries.
SungEel MCC Americas, a partnership between South Korean recycling company SungEel HiTech and White Plains-based e-recycler and broker Metallica Commodities Corp. will invest $23 million at the former IBM Corp. site to recycle 3,000 tons of spent lithium-ion batteries annually, Empire State Development, New York's economic development arm, announced late Thursday afternoon.
Based on estimates from the state, jobs at the site will pay, on average, $50,000.
"The state’s energy storage initiative makes the Southern Tier an obvious choice," said Danish Mir, chief operating officer of Metallica Commodities Corp. in a prepared statement.
Incentives for the project include a $750,000 grant for monitoring and evaluation efforts at the new facility and a $1 million tax credit.
A lithium-ion recycling operation will complement Imperium3, a promising but fledgling company now operating at the Huron campus that promises to revolutionize the batteries with a new generation of energy storage products with greater capacity and longer life spans.
“Any day you find out more jobs are coming to your county is a great day," said Broome County Executive Jason Garnar in the prepared release.
Large growth in lithium-ion power storage units has led to the growth of the recycling industry. Demand for cobalt and lithium used in the batteries used to power everything from mobile phones to electric cars has caused prices for the raw material to rise. In the industry, the process of recovering materials from recycled products is termed "urban mining."
Owners of Huron campus, once one of the largest IBM facilities in the nation with nearly 3 million square feet of space, have been attempting to repurpose the facility since IBM sold the site about 16 years ago. It now houses a collection of businesses including BAE Systems, Cadence, a Binghamton University flexible circuits operation and i3 Electronics — the much smaller successor to the IBM microelectronics operation that once dominated the site.
By the end of 2019, the newly formed Imperium3 New York expects to employ 230 workers overseeing the production of 700 batteries each minute in 400,000-square feet of vacant manufacturing on the former IBM-Endicott campus. The project hopes to employ 1,000 or more people as the market develops.
Over the next two years, Imperium will invest an estimated $140 million into production equipment, and start training a workforce to oversee the exacting process necessary to assemble defect-free lithium-ion cells designed for use in the automotive industry and green energy projects.
The man spearheading the effort, Shailesh Upreti, has been on the Binghamton University campus for 10 years, researching advances in lithium-ion batteries under the guidance of Professor Stanley Whittingham, who has gained a worldwide reputation for his work in energy storage.
"We look forward to leveraging the region’s educational institutions, technological resources, and manufacturing tradition," said Mir of Metallica Commodities Corp.
It is not known where on the sprawling campus the joint venture will be housed.
On its Web site, Metallica describes itself as a company that was founded in 2006 with a focus on research, design and implementation of metals recovering processes.
SungEel describes itself as one of the few major recyclers of lithium-ion batteries worldwide. Established in 2000, it is based in Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do, Korea, and employs more than 140 individuals.
The joint venture between Metallica and SungEel was announced this past April with the goal of cracking the North American market for the recycling of lithium-ion batteries.
MNS Price at posting:
32.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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