Those in the battery sector will have seen the news that battery recycling scale-up, Ascend Elements, has landed $162M investment to enable them to build their sustainable li-ion plant in Kentucky, USA. This brings Ascend's total investment to a staggering $704M in the last 12 months! 

Ascend Elements' CEO, Mike O'Kronley, was a guest on Hyperion CEO David Hunt's Leaders in Cleantech podcast back in late 2022, where he shared his vision for the company and it's unique competitive edge via more economical production. It's incredible to see how far the business has come since then!

Ascend Elements isn't the only hot recycling ticket either. Analysts are predicting the battery recycling sector could be a $35-40B market by 2030! This year we've already seen a trend of capital investments into recycling businesses around the world! UK-based Altilium secured a £9.3M follow-on investment to further accelerate UK and European commercialisation, Li-Cycle secured a €6.4M grant in Germany, and a significant proportion of Northvolt's latest $5B debt financing, will go towards further development of its recycled materials plant. 

Despite the global economic challenges, circularity of the battery value chain is proving to remain a robust investment!

One of the key topics at this week's Energy Storage Summit was the new regulations around local supply, both in terms of the % of the battery manufactured and % of materials supplied locally. The EU battery Regulations are also going to drive increased needs for high proportions of recycled materials, so these combined will be big drivers for the battery recycling sector!

I'm intrigued to see how this sector matures in the next 18 months. I expect more European players to emerge, particularly those backed by large industrial corporates but I also expect an influx of international players beginning to establish local footholds in Europe to comply with these changes, like we've seen with recycling giants Redwood Materials and SungEel Hitech recently!

How do you see the sector shaping up?

I'm the Associate Partner for Energy Storage at Hyperion Executive Search. We help companies along the battery value chain to hire great senior talent across commercial, operational and engineering / technical functions. If you're looking to grow your team or make your first European hires, then get in touch at david.beeston@hyperionsearch.com