IS Dongseo buys EV battery recycling firm BTS Technology

IS Dongseo Co., a South Korean waste management company, has acquired Slovakia-based battery recycling company BTS Technology Ltd. for 37.5 billion won ($28 million) in a bid to advance into Europe’s end-of-life battery market.

Under the agreement signed on Aug. 23, IS Dongseo will secure a 79.2% stake in BTS Technology, it said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

Established in 2007, BTS Technology operates a total of four units in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary. It controls half of Europe’s waste battery collection market, according to its website.

BTS Technology is building a plant in Poland to pre-process waste batteries from cells to modules. Once completed, it will be able to process EV battery scraps collected from about 50,000 EVs, or up to 100,000 units, annually.

It is expected to be up and running within the year.

End-of-life lithium-ion batteries go through pre-processing steps to recover cathode-containing powder, called black mass.

Located near LG Energy Solution Ltd.'s battery-producing plant in Wroclaw, BTS Technology's Poland factory is five minutes from the entrance of the highway and near the German border.

BTS Technology has room to further expand its capacity there to up to 120,000 tons of battery scraps.

Currently, the plant under construction occupies only 10,000 square meters of the total licensed land of 50,000 square meters.

In aggregate, it is aiming to expand its waste battery processing capacity to 150,000 tons a year by 2030, according to its website.

The acquisition is expected to help IS Dongseo's foray into the battery recycling market in Europe, the world's largest EV market.

BTS Technology has been in a strategic alliance with Saker, Slovakia’s largest non-ferrous metal recycling company.

Poland has emerged as a manufacturing and logistics hub for South Korean EV battery and materials producers.

Last year, POSCO Holdings Inc. built a battery recycling plant in Poland, after it had inked an agreement to collect 10,000 tons of battery scraps per year from LG’s factory in the country.

The end-of-life battery market in Europe is expected to grow rapidly, in line with the continent's tougher regulations on battery manufacturers to use more recycled materials.

In 2022, IS Dongseo reported a 74% surge to 4 billion won in net profit from a year before. Its sales shot up 48% to 8.5 billion won over the same period.

Write to In-Hyeok Lee at twopeople@hankyung.com
 

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.