Lithium Australia subsidiary Envirostream has secured an exclusive agreement with Volvo Group Australia’s bus division to recycle end-of-life lithium-ion batteries from its electric and hybrid bus fleet.
Volvo manufactures and supplies electric and hybrid buses to Australian clients, including the Public Transport Authority in Western Australia and Transdev in Queensland.
The initial three-year agreement designates Envirostream as the exclusive provider of battery recycling services for Volvo’s electric and hybrid bus fleet in Australia.
“We are very excited by the exclusive recycling agreement signed with Volvo, a leading manufacturer of electric buses in Australia,” said Lithium Australia managing director and chief executive officer Simon Linge. “The agreement validates our strategy to target large-scale OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and ESS (energy storage systems) manufacturers to grow our share of the high-margin, large-format battery collection volumes. Increasing our capability and growing volumes are strong drivers for the company reaching cashflow breakeven within the recycling business, which we aim to achieve in the near term.”
Envirostream also holds exclusive recycling agreements with Hyundai Glovis and LG Energy Solution.
Lithium Australia maintains an ongoing relationship with Mineral Resources (MinRes) for the development and operation of a pilot plant and the completion of an engineering study for a demonstration plant. The foundation of this collaboration is Lithium Australia’s innovative lithium extraction process, LieNA. Both companies began piloting the LieNA processing technology in March.
Lithium Australia aims to establish a similar partnership for its lithium iron phosphate and lithium manganese iron phosphate products.