Sumitomo metal mining to build recycling plants for lithium ion batteries

Sumitomo Metal Mining (TSE: 5713) has decided to construct recycling plants to
recover copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium from used lithium ion batteries (LIB) and other
materials in the Toyo Smelter & Refinery located in Saijo City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan, and the
Niihama Nickel Refinery located in Niihama City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan. Construction of the
plants is scheduled to start in FY2024 (from April 2024 to March 2025) and be completed in June 2026.The capability of the facilities at the plants, which means the volume of raw material can be processed, is planned to be the equivalent of approximately 10,000 tons of LIB cells per year. Along with the construction of these plants, Sumitomo Metal Mining has also concluded partnership agreements with recycling companies to put in place a recycling supply chain. With this as a spur, it shall work together with the partners and accelerate its studies on a collection system for used LIB.

Sumitomo Metal Mining has been worked on the commercialization of “battery-to-battery”
recycling that takes the metals in used LIB and in the intermediate materials occurring in the LIB
production process and recycles them into battery materials, and has established LIB recycling
technology for the recovery and recycling of copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium through a
process of joint development and process combination with Kanto Denka Kogyo in
2022

The LIB recycling plants that Sumitomo Metal Mining has decided to build will enable the
efficient processing of used LIB that contains many impurities through a combination of
pyrometallurgical smelting and hydrometallurgical refining, and their design takes into account
handling the expecting future increase in used LIB and the metal recovery rate and recycled
material inclusion rate defined in EU Battery Regulation in force since August 2023. The plants
also incorporate the company’s own technology for suppressing CO2 emissions, and it shall
undertake further technology development and optimization with the goal of reducing its
carbon footprint.

The construction of the plants is supported by the Green Innovation Fund Project, which was
publicly solicited by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization
(NEDO), Japanese national research and development corporation.

Sumitomo Metal Mining shall continue with its initiatives towards establishing an LIB recycling
system, and shall contribute to the achievement of a sustainable circular economy.