Korean Conglomerate SK Eco Plant Makes Bold Move, Unloads KRW 131.6 Billion Worth of Shares in Ascend Elements
SK Eco Plant Sells Shares of Ascend Elements Worth KRW 131.6 Billion
- SK Eco Plant Announces Sale of 9,223,555 Shares of Ascend Elements
- Portfolio Efficiency and Recycling Business Expansion to Drive Growth
- Improved Financial Stability through Liquidity Enhancement
SK Eco Plant has announced the sale of 9,223,555 shares of US-based Ascend Elements to SKS Private Equity (SKS PE) for $98.23 million (approximately KRW 131.6 billion).
Ascend Elements is a leading American company specializing in waste battery recycling. SK Eco Plant had invested a total of $60.84 million in Ascend Elements.
This sale enables SK Eco Plant to accelerate its portfolio efficiency, including its recycling business. The company plans to nurture IT Asset Disposal (ITAD) services in response to the growing demand for AI, focusing on SK Tes, a subsidiary specializing in recycling, while continuing its strategy of dominating the global waste battery recycling market.
SK Tes is expanding its ITAD facilities dedicated to data centers, where demand is increasing due to the spread of AI. The company operates a hyperscale factory in Virginia, USA, capable of processing up to 600,000 individual servers per year. At SK Tes’ Virginia ITAD plant, various information from hard disks and memories of data center servers is completely destroyed and then reused and recycled.
The collaboration between Essencore, a proposed subsidiary, and SK Tes is expected to create high added value. Essencore is a semiconductor module company headquartered in Hong Kong. IT assets that have gone through the ITAD process are repaired and inspected and resold as refurbished products, or disassembled and sold as parts or materials, including Essencore DRAM memory modules, SSDs, SD cards, and USB memory.
In the electric vehicle battery recycling market, SK Eco Plant intends to seek new directions through its North American infrastructure and maximize the use of facilities built in Europe and Asia. The company has successfully internalized key technologies to improve the recovery rate of key minerals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium from waste batteries.
This sale is expected to strengthen SK Eco Plant’s financial soundness, securing over KRW 130 billion in liquidity.
SK Eco Plant stated, “We have made a profit through strategic investment,” and “We will continue to improve financial stability based on ensuring liquidity and strengthening the competitiveness of the recycling business, including waste batteries.”