Dubatt Battery Recycling opened the UAE’s first fully integrated battery recycling plant at the cost of 120 million UAE dirhams ($32.67 million) in Dubai Industrial City.

The ingots manufactured at the plant will be used to produce new batteries, creating a circular economy in line with the goals of the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology’s Operation 300bn programme, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The battery products will be sold in the UAE and exported across the GCC, Europe, and Far East.

The plant covers a built-up area of 65,000 square feet and is equipped with advanced battery breaking, separating, smelting, and refining technologies to safely extract hazardous waste from used lead acid batteries, recycling up to 80 percent of battery waste produced in the UAE to manufacture lead ingots. 

The plant’s proposed AED96 million expansion project, spanning 50,000 square feet of built-up area, is expected to raise Dubatt’s turnover to AED200 million, the statement said. 

The expansion will raise the factory’s lead acid battery recycling capacity to 75,000 metric tonnes (MT) a year, in addition to introducing dedicated lines for lead billets, wires and lead shots. 

In addition, the expansion will include a grinding and granulation line for 3,600 MT of battery plastics, 5,000 MT of lithium batteries, and 7,000 MT of e-waste.

“The UAE generates around 72,000 to 96,000 tonnes of used batteries every year, and this encouraged us to develop a homegrown solution to ensure their proper recycling,” said Shamsudheen Binmohideen, Chairman of Dubatt.

(Writing by P Deol; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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