Ground has been broken for a combined lead acid battery manufacturing plant and recycling facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Italian group Seri Industrial announced on March 22. The company behind the Dubai Industrial City project — Dubatt Battery Recycling — is a joint venture between Dubai-based Regency Group and Seashore Group. Dubatt is investing AED110 million (about $30 million) in the project. Meanwhile, Dubatt is discussing a potential technology partnership with Seri group company, Faam Italia, to also produce advanced lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles and other applications. The 154,000 square-feet recycling plant is to be operational by January 2023, while the advanced lead acid battery plant is set to start operating within the next two years. Regency Group corporate management chairman, Shamsudheen Bin Mohideen, said the battery plant would be commissioned over the next two years and would produce a “made in the UAE battery brand”. The battery plant will be built on a 70,000 square-feet site.
Expansion plan
Dubatt director Hasique Pandikadavath said the small to medium sized recycling plant would start with a 10-tonne-hour battery crusher, a four-cubic-meter fuser and four refining kettles. The initial recycling capacity would be up to 25,000 tonnes of used lead acid batteries annually, producing 14,000 tonnes of lead ingots and 1,750 tonnes of plastic chips to be sold to battery manufacturers, the medical sector, fisheries and other industrial sectors. There was no indication provided by the firm as how the slag from the smelting would be disposed of — an issue that has troubled permitting in the region in the past. Pandikadavath said this represented the recycling of about 35% of the scrap lead acid batteries generated in the UAE each year. “We are planning to double our recycling capacity within a year of commercial production and our plant is built with this arrangement to expand.”