BMW plans Bavarian center to pioneer new battery recycling method

The BMW Group is investing €10 million ($10.5 million) to build a specialist center for recycling battery cells in Bavaria, South Germany. BMW Group’s planned Cell Recycling Competence Center (CRCC) will focus on what the company called ‘direct recycling’ –– a method that enables residual materials from battery cell production, as well as whole battery cells, to be mechanically dismantled into their valuable components.

According to Markus Fallböhmer, SVP Battery Production at BMW AG, the planned CRCC will complement the company’s existing in-house expertise. BMW Group initially developed the direct recycling method at its competence centers in Munich and Parsdorf. The new CRCC will implement it on a larger scale and, once the processes are finalized, battery cell material in the mid-double-digit ton range can be recycled per year.

“From development and pilot production to recycling, we are creating a closed loop for battery cells,” Fallböhmer said. He added that the method will help reduce costs for BMW Group’s battery cell pilot line as the recycled raw materials from the CRCC will be used to produce battery cells at its competence centers.

The CRCC’s exact location will be in Kirchroth, in the Straubing-Bogen district of Lower Bavaria, very close to the Munich and Parsdorf facilities. It will be incorporated into the expansion of an existing building in an industrial park.

The German automotive manufacturer said installation work at the direct recycling center is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2025, and validation of the direct recycling method in near-series processes will follow.

Unlike conventional methods, the main characteristic of direct recycling is that raw materials from battery cells are not reverted to their original state but are instead fed back “directly” into the cell production cycle. The method dispenses with the previously common energy-intensive chemical or thermal processing.

Although BMW Group has full ownership of the intellectual property for its direct recycling method, the new CRCC will be built and operated by Encory GmbH. The company is a joint venture of the BMW Group and Interzero Group, specializing in logistics, recycling, and remanufacturing of vehicle components.

The building itself will feature photovoltaic systems installed on the roof, while electrical energy from the discharged cells will be captured in energy storage systems within the building and used to operate the recycling systems. The CRCC will employ around 20 people.

Battery recycling is a key area of interest for the renewables industry, and it is being driven by innovations in materials science, as Manikumar Uppala of Indian lithium-ion recycling company Metastable Materials wrote in a guest article for ESS News recently.