Glencore trader who led ill-fated battery recycling push to exit

me-metals: Glencore Plc head of recycling Kunal Sinha is stepping down after unwinding the firm’s unsuccessful investment partnership with battery metals recycler Li-Cycle Holdings Corp, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to me-metals cited from mining.com, While better known as a miner and commodity trader, Glencore has long been a major player in recycling metals including copper and lead. It expanded into battery recycling in 2022 with investments in Li-Cycle and UK-based Britishvolt, with Sinha spearheading the effort.

A Glencore spokesperson declined to comment.

Li-Cycle filed for bankruptcy in May, and Glencore — which by then had become a key creditor to the company with $327.5 million in outstanding convertible notes — took over Li-Cycle’s key industrial assets and technology portfolio in August. Li-Cycle co-founder Ajay Kochhar joined Glencore in August as its new head of battery recycling, according to his LinkedIn page.

Li-Cycle was once a high-flying start-up in the nascent battery-recycling industry. Its shares rallied strongly in 2021 as investors bought into the company’s plans to recover lithium, cobalt and nickel from used electric-vehicle batteries, at a time when the EV narrative was particularly hot.

Sinha, who will leave next month, was instrumental in Glencore’s push into the emerging sector, which became fiercely competitive as prospective recyclers sought to position themselves ahead of an anticipated surge in scrap supply from the 2030s onwards.

Li-Cycle planned to build five plants, including a proposal to transform Glencore’s lead smelter in Italy into Europe’s biggest producer of black mass, a shredded form of metals extracted from old batteries. The plan has yet to be approved by the local authority.

Li-Cycle faced setbacks in 2023, when its flagship plant in Rochester, New York was halted due to a surge in construction costs. Its shares started plunging as the company faced a funding crunch.

Glencore’s investment in UK Britishvolt also turned sour, with the UK company filing for bankruptcy in 2023 after becoming an early casualty in Europe’s crowded effort to boost EV-battery production.

source: mining.com

UK Britishvolt EV battery Cobalt Nickel electric vehicle batteries