Dr Will Barker: Mint Innovation CEO on the company securing $18m to recycle EV batteries for Jaguar Land Rover

An Auckland company is part of a consortium which has secured nearly $18 million in UK Government funding to help Jaguar Land Rover recycle old EV batteries.

Mint Innovation, along with LiBatt Recycling and Warwick University, will help develop technology to extract lithium, nickel and cobalt from used batteries.

Mint Innovation CEO Dr Will Barker says the company is scaling to be one of the leaders in recovering valuable metal from e-waste. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
News Talk ZB so major carmakers turned to New Zealand
to help recycle their EV batteries and to tell us
who Doctor Will Barker joins you now from Mint Innovation.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello, Will, Hi Andrew, thanks for having me on the show.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
So you've got an eighteen million dollar contract to recycle
EV batteries.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Who with Yeah, there's a Jaguar androver So as part
of the collaboration we have with them to scale our
technology from the pirate scale which we do in Auckland
into kind of larger scale that then goes on to
commercial scale in the UK.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
So they should their batteries to New Zealand to be recycled.
Here are we taking risks here?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
No, we don't really recycle them here. We are building
a plant with them in the UK, and that we're
using the technology that we developed here in New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
So obviously batteries of being used more and more. Could
we become the best at lithium removal and disposal in
the world?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, that's the essentially what the technology does. We've developed
a unique technolog and we are scaling to be one
of the world leaders in this. How did you do that?
We've got some very very clever lab people were start
the business and recovery metals from e waste and have
just kind of extended the platform to looking at other

(01:17):
waste streams with interesting metals and LESSI mind, batteries huge
problem and those critical metals in them are a huge opportunity.
If you can create a circular solution, then everybody's a winner.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Well, good on you. I hope you've developed a better mousetrap,
so to speak Will Barker, the man behind Mint Innovation,
Doctor Will Barker, I should say, And yes we're dealing
with the UK's let's them bettery removal. That's a good
thing and that's a growth industry.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
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