Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Bloomberginia recently
Speaker 1: reporting have a tipping point for battery electric vehicle ascendency
Speaker 1: has been reached globally and it's about once five of
Speaker 1: new car sales go fully electric, everything changes, according to
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg analysis of the nineteen countries that have made
Speaker 1: the e V pivot, which kind of got us wondering
Speaker 1: about battery recycling overall. Well, fortunately we got Marcus Randolf
Speaker 1: with us. He's executive chairman, CEO and president Echo Bad
Speaker 1: It's the world's biggest recycler of batteries. Marcus, great to
Speaker 1: have you with us. I want to talk about the
Speaker 1: business in just a second, but give us a macro
Speaker 1: view of your world right now and help us understand
Speaker 1: the biggest challenges your company is facing. Sure, so battery research.
Speaker 1: Let let me start with the quiz. I love this
Speaker 1: because it's her to helps people understand what batteries are about.
Speaker 1: What do you think is the most highly recycled products.
Speaker 1: I know what it is because I looked at the website.
Speaker 1: But you, but you put your paper out on the
Speaker 1: curb and battery led battery recycling and recovery of lead
Speaker 1: through the recycling process. So so lead is by far
Speaker 1: the world's best recycling story. And we're talking about batteries
Speaker 1: like you know during cell batteries, those aren't so lithium ion,
Speaker 1: just lithium referring to lead acid batteries. Now, so you
Speaker 1: find well, well, car batteries, car batteries and those big
Speaker 1: black boxes battercards with the two little posts on them,
Speaker 1: and those things we recycle a hundred and thirty million
Speaker 1: of those a year, big numbers. So what happens is
Speaker 1: we moved to e VS. What does that mean for you? Well,
Speaker 1: EVS does two things. One is, obviously it opens up
Speaker 1: the world for lithium ion batteries, which are very different however,
Speaker 1: I think, and we'll talk about that in a minute,
Speaker 1: i'm sure. But one of the things that gets missed
Speaker 1: is EVS also used lead acid batteries, so all the
Speaker 1: safety systems and e V so you know, the lithium
Speaker 1: part is the motive part, but your powers during your
Speaker 1: power breaks, if if your lithium battery disconnects, you don't
Speaker 1: want your car to lose control. So all air eggs
Speaker 1: and stuff comes from lead acid batteries. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people say lead acid batteries are gonna die, they're
Speaker 1: going to re replaced by lithium. Not true. You know,
Speaker 1: they're still going to be used. Admittedly they don't used
Speaker 1: as much light acid as a car does, but there's
Speaker 1: still it's still a substantial part of our going forward business.
Speaker 1: So how much demand or what are you seeing like
Speaker 1: in your business in terms of diamond dynamics like growth
Speaker 1: of business and so on and so forth, and some
Speaker 1: of the main themes that we talk about, whether it's
Speaker 1: inflationary pressures, labor pressures. Tell us a little bit about that. Well,
Speaker 1: step back, I mean, you know that the word, the
Speaker 1: thing you're never going to get away from is what
Speaker 1: is it mean to have this big boom and e VS?
Speaker 1: And what is that going to do for lithium? So
Speaker 1: you know that the low end of projections is sort
Speaker 1: of compound annual growth rate UM. When you when you
Speaker 1: you know that didn't really matter how much when you
Speaker 1: know you're just selling a few of easy year which
Speaker 1: is where we were it or ten years. Everybody's worried
Speaker 1: about lithium and now now, I mean, you know, including
Speaker 1: plug in electric hybrids, last year there were six point
Speaker 1: six million electric vehicle soul six point six million, almost
Speaker 1: double what they were the prayer year. So you say,
Speaker 1: where's this industry going? For us? Lithium is both our
Speaker 1: greatest threat and our greatest opportunity. So you you look
Speaker 1: at what we're trying to do as we go forward,
Speaker 1: and that's to be we are by far the industry
Speaker 1: leader and lead asset side, and we are rapidly becoming.
Speaker 1: So on the lithiums, you have to well because we
Speaker 1: want to we you know, in other words, to you
Speaker 1: to be honest. I mean, it is going to be
Speaker 1: challenging for lead acid batteries of a long term because
Speaker 1: lithium are just with their energy density is much more
Speaker 1: favorable and their ability to fully discharge is better. So
Speaker 1: they have big advantages. But on costs they get killed.
Speaker 1: And so if you have low cost applications where you
Speaker 1: need big surges of power, that's right down the world
Speaker 1: of lead acid batteries. As you get over the cars
Speaker 1: that have long, steady draws at last for hours, lithium
Speaker 1: batteries are fantastic, They're just expensive. They're hard, to recycle.
Speaker 1: So I give you the numbers for lead sid recycling
Speaker 1: and recovery lite um recoveries. Now, the u e U
Speaker 1: is trying to legislate sixty five percent recovery and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of companies that are making it, meaning
Speaker 1: that of the lithium in a lithium ion battery is recycled,
Speaker 1: the metal is recovered, nickel, copper, cobalt. How usable is
Speaker 1: it on the other side of that recycling? Uh, it
Speaker 1: is and it isn't the this is this is where
Speaker 1: smart question. Yeah, actually that really was a smart people
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, growing the smart economy in the US. Well,
Speaker 1: you look at lithium batteries. You know, the lithium, nickel,
Speaker 1: and cobalt deposits in the US are not very good.
Speaker 1: So all this sus come from someplace else. Then the
Speaker 1: manufacturers are very interested in retaining control through the recycling process.
Speaker 1: So let add the battery. You get rid of it
Speaker 1: out of your car, you leave it at pet boys
Speaker 1: and they give it to us and it just disappears
Speaker 1: in the system in lithium. The car manufacturers want to
Speaker 1: own that stuff right through the process, you know, And
Speaker 1: you just keep going and it's a pretty different business US.
Speaker 1: But you know, kind of the takeaways here is you're
Speaker 1: going to see a lot of demand. I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of questions about is there enough supply?
Speaker 1: You know, the recycling is really important, particularly because the
Speaker 1: manufacturers weren't own the resources. But starts a different world.
Speaker 1: But the question I think that you're asking is when
Speaker 1: you recycle it it is recycling. Is it comes back
Speaker 1: to write the manufacturer or is it you know he
Speaker 1: did well? Actually, so what happens? So they don't have
Speaker 1: the deposits, so they ship the materials here, they make
Speaker 1: the batteries, or they make them in chump. By the way,
Speaker 1: China has remember the giga factories, Well China has about
Speaker 1: ten times more in the US does. So you start
Speaker 1: severely disadvantage. You don't have many giga factories, you don't
Speaker 1: have many resources. Then you get on the back end
Speaker 1: of this and right now there isn't a single company
Speaker 1: in the US that can make cathode quality lithium ion batteries.
Speaker 1: So they then processed it here, send back to China,
Speaker 1: then it comes back here again. You know. So where
Speaker 1: this industry has got to evolve is it needs to
Speaker 1: get to where we have the full cycle processing capability here,
Speaker 1: and we're somewhat unique, as is ECO Bad, because we're
Speaker 1: in the front end of that and we do the logistics,
Speaker 1: the discharging, the disassembly, the shredding, the production of what's
Speaker 1: called black mass, which is sort of all of the
Speaker 1: metals in one then it goes off to others who
Speaker 1: handle the very back into the process. But TESLA isn't saying, hey, Marcus,
Speaker 1: handle this for us, or are they Well, they're saying
Speaker 1: they want somebody to handle it form and this is
Speaker 1: sort of where the contention is. Well, that is kind
Speaker 1: of open. I think the starting assumption would be it
Speaker 1: would be the black mass processors on the back end,
Speaker 1: But what's actually happened is there is an oversupply of
Speaker 1: black mass processing and there's a shortage on the front
Speaker 1: end of disassembly, logistics and treading, which is why we're
Speaker 1: wanting to invest in that front side. So give us
Speaker 1: an idea of where things go in terms of worth.
Speaker 1: Energy costs so high, and we leave about thirty seconds left,
Speaker 1: so sorry that we're running out of time in your pivot.
Speaker 1: We've only got thirty seconds. You'll have to come back
Speaker 1: at another time. Yeah, based on what you're seeing this
Speaker 1: pivot right to alternative energy EV like, what are you
Speaker 1: seeing or how quickly? Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave
Speaker 1: you with something to think about it. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: almost answering your question. Um, you know, as you as
Speaker 1: you think about the story and lead it is the
Speaker 1: best recycled product. And it's also if you don't get
Speaker 1: it right on the recycled side, you are not going
Speaker 1: to have the you know, the the climate changing elements
Speaker 1: necessary to deal with wind power and solar power. You
Speaker 1: need energy storage and that's going to come about through
Speaker 1: companies like Eco bat Right, and we need to be
Speaker 1: really efficient. Um A millionaire questions, So that means you
Speaker 1: must come back where you're based, Santa Fan, Dallas. It's
Speaker 1: an easy flight. Marcus Randolph, executive chairman, CEO and president
Speaker 1: of Eco bat joining us in studio. Man, a busy day.
Speaker 1: I've got another one tomorrow. Yeah, let's let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's do it tomorrow. All right, you're listening and watching,
Speaker 1: It's a burg business week