South Korea’s major power plant builder Doosan Enerbility Co. plans to establish a battery recycling subsidiary, aiming at the sector expected to rapidly grow with the rising global electric vehicle industry.

Doosan Enerbility said on Friday its board of directors decided to set up Doosan Recycle Solution, a unit that reprocesses waste batteries to collect lithium, a core material for EV cells.

“We decided to found a subsidiary with an independent management system to dominate business opportunities in the rapidly growing battery recycling market,” said Doosan Enerbility Vice President of Strategy Choi Jaehyuk, who has been working on the subsidiary’s establishment.

“We aim to accelerate the business growth with fast decision-making and expertise, utilizing our own competitive technology,” Choi said in a statement.

BETTER ECONOMICS, HIGHER COLLECTION RATES

The global battery recycling market was forecast to soar by more than 120 times to 87 trillion won ($67.8 billion) by 2040 from an estimated 700 billion won this year, according to SNE Research, a Seoul-based energy market tracker.

Doosan Enerbility proved its own technology developed in 2021 to collect lithium from waste batteries. The technology treats materials in waste batteries by heating, separates lithium using distilled water and extracts lithium carbonate through the crystallization method.

Its process is simpler than those of the existing technologies, improving the economics of extraction while increasing lithium purity and collection rates through eco-friendly methods without chemicals, the company said.

Doosan Recycle Solution plans to build commercial production facilities with a schedule to start processing about 3,000 tons of materials per year to extract lithium in the second half of 2025.

The company also aims to expand its business in cooperation with raw materials suppliers.