Toyota Tsusho, LG Energy establish battery reclamation JV in US

Toyota Tsusho and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution have reached an agreement to establish Green Metals Battery Innovations (GMBI), a company that will engage in the reclamation of automotive battery scrap materials in North Carolina, US, Toyota Tsusho said in a media release.

In the United States, growth of the lithium-ion battery market is accelerating amid a rapid increase in demand for electrified vehicles and renewable energy. This surge is expected to lead to a substantial volume of end-of-life batteries and production scrap in the future, such as those generated in manufacturing processes. In addition, with heightened environmental awareness, a movement toward making the recovery and reuse of rare metals mandatory is accelerating globally, requiring companies to respond to these trends.

“GMBI will operate a pre-processing business that shreds and sorts battery scrap to efficiently and reliably extract valuable metals including nickel, cobalt, and lithium,” Toyota Tsusho , which is headquartered in Nagoya, Japan, said in the media release. “GMBI aims to build a supply chain that circulates these recovered materials into the production of new batteries.” 

Going forward, GMBI plans to build a facility with an objective to achieve annual processing capacity of up to 13,500 tons of scrap, equivalent to more than 40,000 automotive battery units. Operations are scheduled to begin in 2026. The company will initially focus on extracting valuable metals from production scrap generated by LG Energy Solution and other battery manufacturers, with plans to expand into the processing of end-of-life batteries generated within the US in the future.

Through this business, Toyota Tsusho aims to establish a solid business foundation for processing of battery scrap in North America and realize a closed-loop system that returns recovered materials to the raw material supply for new batteries, the media release said.