Swedish battery agency Northvolt mentioned Friday it had produced its first battery cell with what it described as “100% recycled nickel, manganese and cobalt.”

In a press release, the Stockholm-headquartered firm — which has attracted funding from Goldman Sachs and Volkswagen, amongst others — mentioned the lithium-ion battery cell was manufactured by its recycling program, Revolt.

The cell’s nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode had been produced utilizing metals “recovered by way of the recycling of battery waste.” Exams confirmed that efficiency was on a par with cells made utilizing metals that had been freshly mined, Northvolt mentioned.

On Friday, the enterprise mentioned the design of its personal recycling facility could be expanded so it might recycle 125,000 tons of batteries yearly.

Building of the plant, referred to as Revolt Ett, is slated to start within the first quarter of 2022, with operations beginning in 2023.

It’ll use supplies from end-of-life EV batteries in addition to scrap from Northvolt Ett, the corporate’s gigafactory, the place the primary battery is anticipated to be produced earlier than the tip of 2021. Each services will probably be situated in Skellefteå, northern Sweden.

In keeping with the corporate, the Revolt plant will be capable to recycle supplies together with lithium, cobalt, manganese and nickel, supplying the gigafactory within the course of.

As well as, plastics, copper and aluminum can even be recovered and “recirculated again into manufacturing flows by way of native third-parties.”

In a cellphone interview with CNBC, Emma Nehrenheim, Northvolt’s chief environmental officer, mentioned: “Theoretically, you possibly can, by definition, recycle any steel that you’ve got in a battery and make a brand new battery out of it.”

“As a basic technique, which means when the market of EVs is mature — so, on the level the place [an] equal quantity of automobiles would enter the road as the quantity of automobiles needing to be scrapped or despatched off for recycling — you possibly can truly, in principle, have a really, very excessive recycling price … of batteries.”

“And which means you wouldn’t be topic to a really liquid uncooked materials market and you’d additionally shield your self from very excessive footprints,” Nehrenheim, who can be head of Revolt, mentioned.

Northvolt’s plans come at a time when the shift to electrical automobiles is starting to realize momentum.

This week, signatories to a declaration on the COP26 local weather change summit mentioned they might “work in the direction of all gross sales of latest automobiles and vans being zero emission globally by 2040, and by no later than 2035 in main markets.”

Whereas the U.S., China and carmakers together with Volkswagen and Toyota have been absent from the declaration, signatories did embrace the U.Okay., Mexican and Canadian governments and main automotive companies equivalent to Ford, Basic Motors and Volvo Automobiles.

As international provide chains face critical strain as a result of a large number of things, the notion of recycling supplies and growing a round economic system is beginning to grow to be a gorgeous proposition to some companies, together with these within the electrical automobile sector.

In March of this yr, Lucien Mathieu, from the Brussels-based marketing campaign group Transport & Atmosphere, sought to spotlight the potential of recycling within the EV trade.  

In a press release on T&E’s web site, he mentioned: “Not like immediately’s fossil gasoline powered automobiles, electrical automotive batteries are a part of a round economic system loop the place battery supplies might be reused and recovered to supply extra batteries.”

The recycling of battery supplies, Mathieu argued, was essential when it got here to lowering “the strain on major demand for virgin supplies” and limiting “the impacts uncooked materials extraction can have on the surroundings and on communities.”

Northvolt’s Nehrenheim was requested about how necessary she felt concepts about recycling and a round economic system could be going ahead.

“I believe that is going to be the important thing driver for any new trade,” she mentioned. “There will probably be no disruptive know-how that may reside with out this and I believe that in the long term … recycled supplies in any trade will out compete some other.”

“Long run, it may be far more worthwhile as soon as the processes are established to simply use a product to supply a brand new product,” she went on to state.

“You are lowering dependence … on the uncooked materials market, you have got a way more sustainable supply … it is far more native.”