OREANDA-NEWS. April 15, 2014. OU Ecomet Invest, an Estonian company developing a used lead-acid battery recycling and lead production plant in the Russian town Slantsy not far from the Estonian border, plans to put the plant into operation in June.

"We'll start out with 500 and 1,000 tons at a time and expect to reach nominal capacity by the fall or year-end," AS Ecomet Invest CEO Avo Kaasik told BNS. Right now installation of equipment is under way and the first trials are planned for May.

Ecomet Invest, the plant's developer and operator, has banked on technology that allows to recover the maximum amount of lead from batteries.

"In this sense we consider this plant very environment friendly. Our purest lead is 99.985 percent pure. A degree of purity like this ensures a very decent price. Many manufacturers in Russia are not able to produce lead as pure as this," he said.

Besides lead, which will be sold to Russian and foreign battery manufacturers, the recycling plant will produce polypropylene and sodium sulphate from used batteries. In the second half of the year ammonium sulfate will be added, which effectively is a fertilizer and is produced by none of Ecomet's competitors.

Ecomet started building the plant complex at Slantsy in 2012. The company has issued shares and securities on five occasions to raise capital, most recently on March 28.

Ecomet Invest had equity capital of 6.5 million euros at the end of 2012. It owns 100 percent of the shares in the Russian subsidiary Ecorusmetal.

Shareholders of Ecomet Invest include Ambient Sound Investments OU, investment company of the Estonian co-founders of Skype.