Why Roc: Li-Cycle Creates Green Jobs in Rochester

March 4, 2020 – Mark Gruba

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Li-Cycle is establishing its first commercial site in the United States at Eastman Business Park in Rochester.

The company’s Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Tim Johnston discussed the expansion and Li-Cycle’s business process Wednesday during our Greater Rochester Enterprise Why ROC conversation.

“Li-Cycle is a resource recovery company,” explained Johnston. “We take everything from consumer batteries, be it batteries from phones, laptops, all the way up to electric vehicle, hybrid batteries, and we take those batteries in, we safely process them, and what we’re doing with that is we’re then regaining the material back from the batteries so that we can return it back to the economy and ultimately back into the battery value chain.”

The company was founded in 2016. “When we looked at battery recycling there was an extreme need in the sense that we didn’t want to see batteries going into landfills,” said Johnston. “We wanted to see them actually being recovered from the perspective of being able to recover those materials. But from an economic perspective, it had to be done in a sustainable way. So with our process, not only is it inherently safe in what we’re doing but also what we’re able to do is we’re able to economically process those batteries to make sure those materials are available for reuse.”

Li-Cycle was founded in Toronto. When the decision was made to expand into the United States the company had specific needs. “We decided on Rochester after looking right across the U.S.,” Johnston said. “We did a fairly comprehensive study of just about every different state here in the U.S. What we were looking for was an industrial location with a good resource base and when we talk about resources we’re talking about, and in particular here in Rochester, the Eastman Business Park with Kodak, they have the existing infrastructure in place – existing utilities, buildings, et cetera – but also a labor force that we can tap into in terms of an existing industrial labor force that’s able to work in our facilities.”

Johnston said the hope is to have the facility at Eastman Business Park operational by the third quarter this year. As part of that process, Li-Cycle is looking to hire about 30 or 40 people. “The positions will range everything from administrative positions all the way up to plant managers, mostly focused around the operational side of the business. So these are people that would be working within the plant that we would then train in terms of how to actually operate our plants and we’d be working alongside them with support from our technical team as well.”

To learn more about career opportunities and Li-Cycle visit li-cycle.com

To learn more about Greater Rochester Enterprise visit RochesterBiz.com