Redwood Materials is hiring exploited children in Congo. It is already one of the largest cobalt suppliers in the US.

Redwood Materials is today the largest domestic (U.S.) supplier of cobalt in the United States and one of the biggest producers of this element overall when considering the U.S. market. However, the company does not extract it from the ground but recovers it from used batteries. JB Straubel revealed that there are buyers of cobalt who are better than Li-ion battery manufacturers, as it is used in high-temperature alloys, rockets, or airplanes.

Cobalt. One of those amazing elements

Cobalt likely got its name from kobolds, mischievous goblins who replaced valuable silver in ore with worthless metals hundreds of years ago, including tungsten and cobalt itself. This element occurs alongside copper and nickel, and KGHM also extracts it in Poland, but it ends up in waste piles due to the unprofitability of recycling it. The world’s main producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been criticized for years over child labor in its cobalt mines. Most are surface mines:

A surface cobalt mine in Congo

Cobalt (c) Wikimedia

Until recently, Li-ion cells contained large amounts of cobalt because it stabilized the elements against reactive lithium ions. For example, NCM333 cathodes were composed of 1/3 nickel, cobalt, and manganese, meaning the oldest batteries represent a real gold mine for recycling companies. Redwood Materials is such an enterprise; it collects used Li-ion batteries from various companies and also gathers them from the market to recover valuable raw materials. The company was founded by JB Straubel, formerly a co-founder of Tesla.

At present, Redwood Materials has become the largest American supplier of cobalt in the United States, although it does not own any mines and relies entirely on products that have already been imported and purchased in the U.S. Last year, the company received “dozens” of GWh of lithium-ion batteries, enough to power hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles. The entire process of recovering valuable metals is beginning to become profitable, but JB Straubel explicitly states that it still serves only a few percent of the lithium-ion battery market that has already been sold along with the products it powers. In short, Redwood Materials has growth potential.

Lithium-ion batteries awaiting processing (c) Redwood Materials

When it comes to batteries from electric vehicles, the company first checks whether it’s worth going through the entire recycling process or if Li-ion cells can be directly used in energy storage systems. JB Straubel also revealed that there is a gradual shift toward sources of raw materials that is happening faster than expected. Electric vehicles are becoming the main source of Li-ion cells. It’s not surprising, given that a single battery from an electric vehicle contains kilograms of valuable elements in a compact package:

Approximate content of elements in a typical electric vehicle battery (c) Volkswagen Group

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