Redwood launches cathode cooperation with L&F
Redwood Materials, founded by ex-Tesla CTO JB Straubel, has entered into a cooperation with Korean battery materials manufacturer L&F. Under a multi-year agreement, Redwood will use L&F’s design and manufacturing technology for cathode production.
Redwood will use a new L&F factory to produce battery cathodes for one million electric vehicles per year by 2025 and more than five million electric vehicles per year by 2030. In addition, the collaboration is expected to enable Redwood to increase its annual cathode manufacturing capacity in the US from a planned 100 GWh in 2025 to 500 GWh by 2030.
Shortly afterwards, Redwood confirmed the agreement itself on Twitter. However, further details, such as the location of the factory, were not disclosed.
Redwood Materials was founded as a specialist in battery recycling and currently reprocesses materials from various sources – including the Gigafactory 1 in Nevada operated by Tesla and Panasonic. It also now has a recycling agreement with Ford.
As recently as September, Redwood had announced that it would expand its activities beyond recycling and establish a “closed-loop” or circular supply chain for electric car batteries. In addition to recycling, this includes sourcing raw materials and manufacturing its cathode materials. According to the announcement in September, Redwood plans to announce the location of its battery materials factory by early 2022, where it hopes to achieve the production mentioned above capacities.
Incidentally, the recycling agreement with Ford also provides for the supply of anode and cathode materials from Redwood to the carmaker. Ford, as is well known, has a battery joint venture called BlueOvalSK with the Korean battery manufacturer SK On (known as SK Innovation until the spin-off).
Incidentally, SK’s suppliers of preliminary products also include Redwood partner L&F. L&F also supplies the Korean manufacturers LG Energy Solution and Samsung SDI.
0 Comments