BMW, Northvolt, Umicore team up on battery recycling

BMW will team up with Northvolt, which is building Europe’s largest battery factory in Sweden, and Belgium’s Umicore to develop a process for electric car batteries to be recycled, the automaker said in a statement. BMW had a funding investment of undisclosed size in the venture, the Swedish startup, which plans to build a factory in Sweden to produce 32 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery capacity a year by 2023, said on Monday.

The partnership could indicate that BMW will source batteries from Northvolt, giving investors confidence to fund the project that is expected to raise debt and equity next year.

The project aims to create a “closed life cycle loop” for battery cells, which will be manufactured using a recyclable design and used in electric vehicles, then possibly as stationary storage devices before finally being recycled and reused.