by - New battery recycling companies are springing up to try to meet the booming demand.
- Singapore’s Green Li-ion pocketed $11.55 million for its process to recycle used cells without waste.
- We take an exclusive look at the pitch deck he used for the Series A funding round.
Singapore-based Green Li-ion wants to prevent rechargeable batteries from ending up in landfills.
The global adoption of smartphones, laptops, electric vehicles and other devices has fueled demand for batteries, which depend on a shrinking supply of precious metals. The battery cell production market is expected to reach $360 billion by 2030, according to a McKinsey analysis.
But the batteries that power our devices can only be recharged a certain number of times. Once they reach the end of their life cycle, or when devices are disposed of, batteries become waste.
If thrown away, these can end up leaching toxic metals and chemicals into the ground.
Battery recycling plants can give used batteries a new lease of life, but the process is expensive and inefficient. Current processes can only handle certain types of lithium batteries, according to Leon Farrant, co-founder and CEO of Green Li-Ion.
“We throw 95% of used batteries into landfills. With our technology, we can take that back. If we don’t, we can’t move forward with the energy transition to more reliance on renewable batteries,” Farrant said.
Farrant and CTO Reza Katal co-founded Green Li-ion in 2020 to rejuvenate used batteries into new ones without wasting them, selling machines that make the process easier for recycling plants.
Green Li-ion isn’t alone, with new battery recycling companies emerging around the world, Insider previously reported, with rivals including Nevada-based Redwood Materials and Canada’s Li-Cycle.
Farrant said he believes Green Li-ion technology can set it apart from the competition.
Farrant said that Green Li-ion technology allows its customers to recover the most valuable part of the battery: the cathode. It also reduces your customers’ reliance on manual labor to sort battery parts in the process. The result, Farrant said, makes it more worthwhile for recycling plants to recycle batteries.
The company raised $11.55 million at the end of April. The Series A round was led by energy technology venture capital team Energy Revolution Ventures. Other cleantech co-investors include the corporate venture capital arm of the world’s fourth-largest renewable energy producer, EDP (EDP Ventures), TRIREC, SOSV, Entrepreneur First, MB Energy Partners, Ilshin Holdings, Envisioning Partners and GS Holdings.
The sum raised by Green Li-ion will go towards improving its recycling technology, Farrant said. It will also be used to help build and run operations at its first modular processing plants.
The startup currently has a pilot system in Singapore and is completing a recycling system in Houston, Texas for LiNiCo Corp, a battery recycling company, in Nevada, he said.
The funds will also be used to expand the company to Europe and other markets such as Malaysia, Australia and India, Farrant said.
“We need to find a way to recover the materials from spent batteries, otherwise we will run out of raw materials to make rechargeable batteries. That is the biggest existential risk of Green Li-ion,” Farrant said.
Read on to see the Green Li-ion pitch deck used for its funding round below:
