The ownership of a planned Toyota Tsusho America recycling location in Whitaker Park has changed hands with a South Korean battery innovation company spending $13.56 million for the property.
The new owner is Green Metals Battery Innovations LLC, according to a Forsyth County Register of Deeds filing Friday.
Production is scheduled to begin in late 2025 at the 4043 Reynolds Court plant within the revamped campus.
Toyota Tsusho America paid $13.7 million for the 110,163-square-foot speculative building in September 2024.
Green Metals recovers and recycles raw metals from electric vehicle batteries that no longer work.
Toyota Tsusho owns 51% of the joint venture, which will be a separate operation from Toyota Tsusho’s primary production focus on “sustainable and innovative recycling and waste handling” at the Toyota Battery Manufacturing N.C. plant in Liberty.
Also participating is LG Energy Solution Michigan, a U.S. division of LG Energy Solution of Seoul, a global manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobility, information technology and energy storage systems.
The joint venture will extract black mass, a key material for battery recycling that contains raw metals such as nickel, cobalt and lithium.
The black mass materials are extracted through dismantling and shredding battery production scrap. In the initial stage, LG Energy Solution Michigan will supply scrap generated during the production of EV batteries for Toyota at the Liberty plant.
“The joint venture seeks to further establish a battery-to-battery closed-loop system where those raw materials are circulated as recycled resources for new battery materials, advancing a true circular economy in the battery supply chain,” the companies said.
The facility is expected to reach an annual processing capacity of 13,500 tons of scrap, equivalent to more than 40,000 automotive batteries.
Toyota Tsusho is expected to house the materials at the Liberty plant, where it projects running two weekday shifts where it has 41 employees.
In February 2024, Toyota Tsusho announced a joint venture with Fujihatsu & Toyotsu Battery Components N.C. on a $60 million plant near the Liberty plant that will feature 133 jobs at full production. The joint venture is 60% owned by Fujihatsu.
Production is scheduled to begin in 2025 with initial production volume to be 2.7 million units per month.
rcraver@wsjournal.com
336-727-7376
@rcraverWSJ
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