IN ONE year, the TES B battery recycling facility in Tuas can recycle about 5,000 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries. That works out to about 14 tonnes per day, the equivalent of about 280,000 smartphone batteries.

Yet, at the moment, TES B is only processing up to 70 per cent of its designed capacity, says Alfred Hee, head of battery solutions for the Asia-Pacific region at TES-AMM, the home-grown electronic waste (e-waste) recycler that owns TES B.

“As we are dealing with scraps, which include spent batteries, the frequency and volume is not constant, unlike in a manufacturing plant. In certain months, we have healthy volumes, and then there’s the lull period,” he says.