Behind the Battery Recycling Business

about battery recycling overall. Well, fortunately we got Marcus Randolf with us. He's executive chairman, CEO and president Echo Bad It's the world's biggest recycler of batteries. Marcus, great to have you with us. I want to talk about the business in just a second, but give us a macro view of your world right now and help us understand the biggest challenges your company is facing. Sure, so battery research.

Let let me start with the quiz. I love this because it's her to helps people understand what batteries are about. What do you think is the most highly recycled products. I know what it is because I looked at the website. But you, but you put your paper out on the curb and battery led battery recycling and recovery of lead through the recycling process. So so lead is by far

the world's best recycling story. And we're talking about batteries like you know during cell batteries, those aren't so lithium ion, just lithium referring to lead acid batteries. Now, so you find well, well, car batteries, car batteries and those big black boxes battercards with the two little posts on them, and those things we recycle a hundred and thirty million of those a year, big numbers. So what happens is we moved to e VS. What does that mean for you? Well,

EVS does two things. One is, obviously it opens up the world for lithium ion batteries, which are very different however, I think, and we'll talk about that in a minute, i'm sure. But one of the things that gets missed is EVS also used lead acid batteries, so all the safety systems and e V so you know, the lithium part is the motive part, but your powers during your power breaks, if if your lithium battery disconnects, you don't want your car to lose control. So all air eggs

and stuff comes from lead acid batteries. So a lot of people say lead acid batteries are gonna die, they're going to re replaced by lithium. Not true. You know, they're still going to be used. Admittedly they don't used as much light acid as a car does, but there's still it's still a substantial part of our going forward business.

So how much demand or what are you seeing like in your business in terms of diamond dynamics like growth of business and so on and so forth, and some of the main themes that we talk about, whether it's inflationary pressures, labor pressures. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, step back, I mean, you know that the word, the thing you're never going to get away from is what is it mean to have this big boom and e VS?

And what is that going to do for lithium? So you know that the low end of projections is sort of compound annual growth rate UM. When you when you you know that didn't really matter how much when you know you're just selling a few of easy year which is where we were it or ten years. Everybody's worried about lithium and now now, I mean, you know, including plug in electric hybrids, last year there were six point six million electric vehicle soul six point six million, almost

double what they were the prayer year. So you say, where's this industry going? For us? Lithium is both our greatest threat and our greatest opportunity. So you you look at what we're trying to do as we go forward, and that's to be we are by far the industry leader and lead asset side, and we are rapidly becoming. So on the lithiums, you have to well because we want to we you know, in other words, to you

to be honest. I mean, it is going to be challenging for lead acid batteries of a long term because lithium are just with their energy density is much more favorable and their ability to fully discharge is better. So they have big advantages. But on costs they get killed. And so if you have low cost applications where you need big surges of power, that's right down the world of lead acid batteries. As you get over the cars that have long, steady draws at last for hours, lithium

batteries are fantastic, They're just expensive. They're hard, to recycle. So I give you the numbers for lead sid recycling and recovery lite um recoveries. Now, the u e U is trying to legislate sixty five percent recovery and there are a lot of companies that are making it, meaning that of the lithium in a lithium ion battery is recycled, the metal is recovered, nickel, copper, cobalt. How usable is it on the other side of that recycling? Uh, it is and it isn't the this is this is where

smart question. Yeah, actually that really was a smart people talk about, you know, growing the smart economy in the US. Well, you look at lithium batteries. You know, the lithium, nickel, and cobalt deposits in the US are not very good. So all this sus come from someplace else. Then the manufacturers are very interested in retaining control through the recycling process.

So let add the battery. You get rid of it out of your car, you leave it at pet boys and they give it to us and it just disappears in the system in lithium. The car manufacturers want to own that stuff right through the process, you know, And you just keep going and it's a pretty different business US. But you know, kind of the takeaways here is you're going to see a lot of demand. I think there are a lot of questions about is there enough supply?

You know, the recycling is really important, particularly because the manufacturers weren't own the resources. But starts a different world. But the question I think that you're asking is when you recycle it it is recycling. Is it comes back to write the manufacturer or is it you know he did well? Actually, so what happens? So they don't have the deposits, so they ship the materials here, they make

the batteries, or they make them in chump. By the way, China has remember the giga factories, Well China has about ten times more in the US does. So you start severely disadvantage. You don't have many giga factories, you don't have many resources. Then you get on the back end of this and right now there isn't a single company in the US that can make cathode quality lithium ion batteries. So they then processed it here, send back to China,

then it comes back here again. You know. So where this industry has got to evolve is it needs to get to where we have the full cycle processing capability here, and we're somewhat unique, as is ECO Bad, because we're in the front end of that and we do the logistics, the discharging, the disassembly, the shredding, the production of what's called black mass, which is sort of all of the metals in one then it goes off to others who

handle the very back into the process. But TESLA isn't saying, hey, Marcus, handle this for us, or are they Well, they're saying they want somebody to handle it form and this is sort of where the contention is. Well, that is kind

of open. I think the starting assumption would be it would be the black mass processors on the back end, But what's actually happened is there is an oversupply of black mass processing and there's a shortage on the front end of disassembly, logistics and treading, which is why we're wanting to invest in that front side. So give us an idea of where things go in terms of worth. Energy costs so high, and we leave about thirty seconds left, so sorry that we're running out of time in your pivot.

We've only got thirty seconds. You'll have to come back at another time. Yeah, based on what you're seeing this pivot right to alternative energy EV like, what are you seeing or how quickly? Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave you with something to think about it. I'm kind of almost answering your question. Um, you know, as you as you think about the story and lead it is the

best recycled product. And it's also if you don't get it right on the recycled side, you are not going to have the you know, the the climate changing elements necessary to deal with wind power and solar power. You need energy storage and that's going to come about through companies like Eco bat Right, and we need to be really efficient. Um A millionaire questions, So that means you must come back where you're based, Santa Fan, Dallas. It's

an easy flight. Marcus Randolph, executive chairman, CEO and president of Eco bat joining us in studio. Man, a busy day. I've got another one tomorrow. Yeah, let's let's do it. Let's do it tomorrow. All right, you're listening and watching, It's a burg business week