BATTERY SPECIAL

PIONEIRO’S ADVANCES ON RECYCLING

BATTERY SPECIAL

PIONEIRO’S ADVANCES ON RECYCLING

My name is Vinicius Ferreira and I am currently Director of Pioneiro Ecometais, a lead recycling company located in the municipality of Água Doce, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Furthermore, I can highlight that I have been in the lead recycling segment for over 26 years.

When I entered the job market 26 years ago, battery scrap was a product that did not have much commercial value, in addition to the fact that lead recovery processes used very old technologies, with a system of furnaces, filters and processes as a whole that could be considered somewhat obsolete. Therefore, companies in the segment invested very little in the metallurgical areas of their companies, always focusing mainly on the battery factory.

Over the years, this scenario has changed, with the arrival of new technologies, new demands and requirements related to environmental issues, as well as a need to significantly improve batteries with the arrival of increasingly modern vehicles and more advanced technologies.

Faced with these developments, battery factory managers began to look at lead in a very different way, as they saw it as the main raw material and the most impactful in making it possible to obtain this new battery concept that the market began to demand.

At this point, it can be said that a new milestone of changes was established in the lead recycling segment, or, as everybody says, in the lead smelting segment, changes that began in the middle of 2000, when, slowly and gradually, exponential growth became visible and significantly affected the segment.

The lead market has evolved and become more competitive, with the growth of the automotive market being one of those responsible for leveraging all of this, through the injection of resources for investments in technology, research, process development, where bold companies such as Pioneiro Ecometais, aiming to be part of this evolution and envision growth, they sought out the best in the world to implement internally.

The concept of a sustainable company is the great flag of Pioneiro Ecometais, given the incessant search for self-sufficiency and independence in its raw materials and processes as a whole, with process efficiency being the main fuel for us, professionals, to dedicate ourselves to study and research. And restlessness causing changes. The greatest satisfaction today is reaping results. And that is immeasurable.

In the evolutionary process, the market also renews and changes itself. Given the production scenarios, the main raw material (battery scrap) became a product highly sought after and, as the law of supply and demand works in the market, scrap began to have values far above what it could actually be practiced and, as this raw material began to become scarce, the scrap dealers who, we can consider, those who dominated the market, began to apply abusive prices for a material that until then was treated as “waste” and without much destination.

Whenever we have a difficulty or a problem, we must face it by looking for ways out, alternatives. And that's what we did, after all, in order to be more competitive both in the national and international markets, it was necessary to evolve in processes, be more efficient and mainly reduce costs, and without losing the essence of caring for the environment in operations.

Battery manufacturing companies also did their part and sought, in a legal way, to regularize this informal market that was negatively affecting our segment. The “Eco System” was then implemented, which is guided and regulated by an international treaty to which Brazil is a signatory.

With the “Eco System” being implemented, which basically forces the battery customer to return the unusable battery to the manufacturer, it became more difficult for this scrap to reach the hands of informal scrap dealers, and, as a result, it was possible for the scrap to reach a fair value.

Today, Pioneiro Ecometais is an example of a sustainable company, producing its own fuel that is consumed in the processes, in addition to other main inputs. We also recently implemented a desulfurization process, a pioneering technology in Brazil, the result of which is a significant reduction in the generation of slag (waste that is still sent to industrial landfills).

From another process residue resulting of the sludge from the treatment of effluents, after research work and a lot of dedication, another product was obtained, including with commercial value, called “Agricultural Gypsum”. This product has, among its uses, to significantly improve the root systems of plants, having wide application in agriculture.

Pioneiro Ecometais always focuses on increasing productivity and being procedurally efficient, but without forgetting to pay attention to environmental legislation and requirements and, above all, treats concern with environmental awareness and preservation as an essential pillar of its viability as an industry.

Today, looking back to 26 years ago, who could have imagined that the most recycled metal in the world, a metal that still suffers from many paradigms of being harmful to humans, would be so important for essential products in our lives? Also, how would one think that processes would evolve with so much technology applied and in such a short time, both in Brazil and around the world?

But there is still much more to evolve, processes being developed by countless researchers in the search for increased production efficiency and better techniques for protecting the environment, aiming to bring even more evolution to the segment, and, specifically, to our industry.