At recycling facilities, these batteries pass through several sorting stages before ending up in the ferrous metal fraction alongside other materials. Their small size, irregular shape, and mixed composition make reliable separation difficult. As a result, batteries contaminate metal streams, reduce material value, and increase fire risks during downstream processing.

The joint operation will provide services for large energy-storage and electric vehicle batteries. Its activities include transport, storage, dismantling and second-life assessment. The company states that it can process all battery chemistries.

The Micromat Series IV will be shown with a multicut rotor for processing materials such as big bags and textiles.

The combined event brings together stakeholders from the waste management, recycling, secondary raw materials and circular electronics sectors. With a single registration, visitors gain access to all four exhibitions and their associated conference programmes. Attendance for both the exhibition and conference is free of charge.

Improved prices at the start of 2017 had led to a healthy availability of stainless steel scrap - but "these positive conditions were not to last". There had been a subsequent downward correction in nickel and stainless scrap values such that flows of the latter had slowed, explained Jonathan Bower of UK-based ELG Haniel Metals.

China's reform of its scrap import regime will have potentially far-reaching consequences for the non-ferrous metals sector, the latest divisional meeting was warned by Ma Hongchang, BIR's advisor on the country's policy and regulatory developments. It was even possible, he told delegates in Hong Kong on May 22, that the Chinese government would go as far as to ban imports of certain items of mixed metal scrap.

One of the main challenges currently facing the global recycling industry is "the increasing burden of legislative controls that does not help in the promotion of a smooth and efficient system of waste collection, segregation and transportation of recyclables," BIR World President Ranjit Baxi of J&H Sales International has insisted.