With the rapid development of China's new energy vehicle industry, power battery recycling is starting to become a big business with a rapid increase in participants.

In the first half of 2021, China saw 9,435 power battery recycling company registrations, up 2,611.2 percent year-over-year from the 348 registered in the same period last year, according to data provider Qichacha.

Up to now, there are 15,000 companies related to "power battery recycling" in China, the data showed.

The number of such companies registered in the second quarter of this year was 5,683, an increase of 51.5 percent from the first quarter.

Before 2020, the number of such companies registered grew slowly, and in 2020, the number of companies registered exploded, with 2,579 companies registered for the year, an increase of 253.3 percent year-over-year.

At present, the existing power battery recycling-related companies in China are mainly located in Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu and Hainan, with the numbers of 1,750, 1,336, 1,298 and 1,153 respectively.

The number of power battery recycling-related companies with registered capital of RMB 1 million ($154,681) or less accounts for 25 percent, while those with registered capital of RMB 1-5 million and RMB 5 million or more account for 35 percent and 40 percent, respectively.

With the power batteries of the earliest batch of new energy vehicles coming into "retirement", the total number of retired power batteries in China reached about 200,000 tons in 2020, according to a CCTV report late last month.

This figure is expected to rise to about 780,000 tons by 2025, four times the amount in 2020, according to the report.

China steps up efforts to improve power battery recycling