Nystar Smelters at Port Pirie on Spencer Gulf, South Australia, first recycler of Australia's household batteries
Nystar would extract commercial-grade zinc and copper from single-use alkaline batteries at its product recycling plant, part of the smelters at Port Pirie on South Australia's Spencer Gulf.
Australia's first recycling plant for single-use alkaline batteries would be at the Nystar smelter at the South Australian Spencer Gulf city of Port Pirie, after being accredited by the Battery Stewardship Council in 2022.
Eighty-eight million or up to 2,000 tonnes of single-use household batteries from across Australia would initially be recycled each year at Port Pirie smelter. These batteries would otherwise be processed overseas.
As Australia’s first B-cycle accredited recycler, Nystar would extract commercial-grade zinc and copper from single-use alkaline batteries. On average, Australians used about 8,000 tonnes of alkaline batteries a year, with a big proportion ending in landfill.
Nyrstar's vice president Dale Webb said the recycling would be inside existing infrastructure at the company's multi-metals processing plant that had the capacity to to expand and treat up to 8,000 tonnes of batteries.While the copper from the batteries would be produced at the Port Pirie site, the zinc would be sent to Nrystar's base in Hobart to be processed into green zinc. The rest of the material would go to black sand and become a product in the future green cement project in Port Augusta.
South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas said the batteries recycling was South Australia “not just being part of the circular economy, but leading it. Which is everything we want to be doing as a state”.
South Australia provided an important development for processing Australian e-waste, with the commissioning of the $514 million transformation of Nystar’s Port Pirie smelter in 2017 that included a multi-metals processing and recovery plant. The $23 million product recycling plant at the Port Pirie smelter was built with a $7 million contribution from the South Australian government.
Nyrstar was expected to expand the range of electronic waste (e-waste) for processing in the state. A global multi-metals business, Nyrstar, with plants in Europe and North America, said part of its transformation would be to accept electronic products such as printed computer circuit boards, cathode ray tubes (CRT), mobile phones and related devices. The expanded plant was also expected to take photovoltaic cells from roof solar panels, as well as alkaline batteries.
