What the site does
Birmingham and the West Midlands are the traditional heart of UK vehicle manufacturing, with engineering centres, suppliers and battery development programmes across the region. The grading works opened on the Tyseley Industrial Estate in 2021 to give the UK its own module-level grading site, keeping British material in the country for testing. Its catchment covers England, Wales and Scotland. It opened as UK EV registrations accelerated.
Its 16,000 TPA of capacity covers passenger-car packs from dealers and dismantlers, taxi and bus fleet retirements, and development material from UK engineering programmes. Black cab and bus fleets are a distinctive part of its intake, with pack formats and duty cycles unlike typical private cars. Reusable modules go on to second-life builds, and the rest are sent for black mass production.
What arrives at the gate
Feedstock at Birmingham, England reflects its catchment and plant type. Every consignment is weighed, photographed and logged against the originating manifest before it enters the process area.
- UK passenger-car packs
- Taxi and bus fleet retirements
- Development and test packs
- Dealer and dismantler returns
The process, step by step
The 3 operating lines — module soh bench, eis diagnostics laboratory, ai optical cell grading — run the sequence below.
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Intake & safety triage | Packs are logged, thermally imaged and screened for swelling, coolant ingress or venting before entering the bench area. |
| Controlled de-energising | Residual energy is discharged to a safe state of charge with regenerative load banks and recorded per serial number. |
| Module-level capacity test | Full charge-discharge cycling at C/3 establishes usable capacity, internal resistance and cell-to-cell balance. |
| EIS fingerprinting | 1 mHz–10 kHz impedance sweeps separate SEI growth, lithium plating and contact resistance degradation modes. |
| AI optical inspection | Machine-vision inspection of busbars, welds and cell cans flags mechanical defects that block second-life reuse. |
| Grade assignment | Grade A (≥85% SOH), B (75–85%), C (65–75%) and D routes are assigned, with D-grade material released to refining. |
What sets the site apart
UK grading base. Keeps UK material in the country for testing.
Engineering material. Handles packs from UK development programmes.
Taxi and bus expertise. Experienced with the pack formats and duty cycles of UK fleets.
Where material goes next
Material that Birmingham, England does not finish on site moves to the nearest specialist facility in the network, keeping transport distances and dwell times down.
| Facility | Role | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| Zwickau — Saxony Second-Life Works | Second-Life BESS Works | 1,011 km |
| Rotterdam — Maasvlakte Refining Works | Hydrometallurgical Refinery | 439 km |
Field note