SK Innovation and Kia said on Thursday that they have secured technology to reuse lithium in used batteries.
The pair has also laid the foundation for an ecosystem around recycling used batteries, they said.
The companies have been trialing their battery recycling business for the past year.
SK Innovation and Kia plan to collaborate on dissolving used batteries, retrieving precious metals from them, reuse them for cathode, use them in battery production then have the battery power electric vehicles.
Kia will have its own battery performance review system that will sort out used batteries that can be recycled. These will be made into modules or backs for energy storage systems.
Used batteries with low re-usability will be broken down to cells. SK Innovation will review these cells to extract lithium, nickel or cobalt that can be reused to manufacture cathode.
