Canadian battery recycling company Li-Cycle Holdings Corp., is expanding to a new facility in Kingston, Ont. as it scales up its recycling capacity to meet growing demand from automakers.
The Toronto-based company said it will double its lithium ion battery material processing capacity in Kingston to 10,000 tonnes per year, as well as add warehousing, research, and training space at a new integrated facility in the Eastern Ontario city.
Li-Cycle shared the expansion plans March 8, following a tour of its existing Kingston plant by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Along with giving the company the ability to process more material as electric vehicle battery recycling demand picks up, Li-Cycle said the move will allow it to install its latest automated equipment. The Kingston site was the company’s first commercial-scale plant, built in 2020, and unlike subsequent iterations of its battery shredding technology, it relies on manual battery pack disassembly for certain parts of the recycling process.
The company, which employs 170 in Canada, including 30 at the Kingston plant, would not say where in the city the new multi-purpose site will be located. It said the facility will be substantially larger than the original plant, which covers about 10,000 square-feet (900 square-metres), but that specifics are still being finalized.
