Booming battery recycling business looking to expand into Stratford premises

A BATTERY and motor recycling business is creating 30 new jobs for the Stratford area.

Green Tech Industries based in Southam, takes electric vehicle battery packs at end-of-life and transforms the materials and components into something valuable they can sell.

The 10-strong team are winning projects with major companies, and have just raised millions of pounds of next-stage investment.

GTI’s founder Tony Booth is looking at possible new locations in Stratford, including on Timothy’s Bridge Road, with the aim of scaling up capacity and space.

He said: “People buy an electric car because they want to do something better for the planet, but when these cars come to the end of their life, they're a lot worse than a petrol and diesel car because there's no supply chain to manage them through end of life.

“The only option is to shred them, which puts a load of nasties back into the environment and is a bit of a dirty process.”

He added: “We've found a way of stripping the batteries and saving parts, so we’re taking value out of the batteries before they enter the waste stream.

“If we weren't doing that, they'd just be going straight off for shredding.

“We take out all the bits we know we can use to help repair and service other batteries, then send only the bits to the waste stream that should be going there.”

The team also work their tech magic on motors, as inside EV electric motors are rare earth materials, within the magnets.

GTI has found a way to separate the motors and take the magnets out, then supply those magnets back into industry, helping shore-up the supply chain.

The supply chain for rare earth magnets is highly concentrated in China, which dominates more than 90 percent of the world’s magnet manufacturing and rare earth elements, leaving the rest of the world struggling to compete on price.

Magnets are a crucial element of many every-day pieces of technology including motors, pumps, compressors, wind turbines, electronics, medical devices, satellites, weapon systems, cordless power tools, robots, lifts and aerospace.

With a background in engineering, Tony has experience across motorsport and battery technology, including working with Williams Advanced Engineering.

In fact, he started researching how to tackle this challenge eight years ago, after piles of used Formula E batteries started coming back to the Williams site.

The team at GTI are also starting to design new products, using parts they’re saving.

Tony said: “We're being given all this material because if it wasn't coming to us, it would be going into waste.

“We're testing, revalidating and grading it and putting a certificate against it for continual use and by doing that, we're able to give that material to markets that couldn't have it before.”

The 30 jobs at GTI, that will be advertised in a few months’ time, will be mainly manufacturing operator, electrical and project roles.

Tony said: “I'm trying to make a company where people really feel proud and excited about what they're doing and it’s an ethos that runs across the company.

“We have innovation workshops and it's a cool place to be.

“And when we raise those new jobs, I don't want people travelling too far - I want them to be local.”