Image from CarbonScape.
CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, has entered an investment partnership with graphite materials developer CarbonScape to combine its biographite technology with CATL’s manufacturing and large-scale deployment.
The transaction provides CATL with a combined shareholding of 20% in CarbonScape, plus board representation, and positions it as an industrialisation partner in the further development and scaling of the company’s technology, as automakers and policymakers seek low-carbon, locally sourced and cost-competitive anode materials for the US and European graphite supply chain, the companies said in a new release.
Today more than 75% of graphite used in batteries comes from an oil-based feedstock. CarbonScape said its technology enables the production of battery-grade graphite from widely available forestry by-products.
CarbonScape said its process converts forestry by-products into battery-grade graphite suitable for lithium-ion battery applications.
Last year, the New Zealand-based company signed several agreements for the supply of renewable feedstock to its future biographite industrial plants in Europe and North America.
The agreements, inked with some of the largest forestry companies in the world, followed CarbonScape’s announcement of plans to build a demonstration facility in Kotka, Finland, after having operated their pilot plant facility in New Zealand where it produces biographite.
“This partnership…provides access to CATL’s unparalleled expertise in scaling and mass production, world-class facilities, global market reach, and a clear pathway to gigafactory-scale deployment,” CarbonScape CEO Ivan Williams said.
“It validates the strategic importance of biographite in the future of electrification and uniquely aligns technical de-risking with route-to-market readiness.”
The companies aim to bring commercial biographite production online by the end of the decade, Williams said.