by Paul Leinert and David Shepperson
(Reuters) – Redwood Materials said on Thursday it has received a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy for a $2 billion loan to help build a $3.5 billion recycling and re-manufacturing complex for electric vehicle battery materials in Nevada .
Redwood Materials expects to draw down the first loan tranche later this year, Chief Executive JB Straubel said in an interview.
Straubel said the initial loan draw will “help accelerate production and reduce the time it takes for us to get to full scale” at the northern Nevada campus, which has begun producing copper foil for battery anodes.
Straubel said there has been a “frenzy of activity” among electric vehicle and battery makers since President Joe Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August. The IRA rules are designed to shift the US battery supply chain away from China, which currently produces 70% of batteries for electric vehicles.
Last July, the Department of Energy said it would give a $2.5 billion loan to Ultim Cells, a joint venture between General Motors Co. and LG Energy Solutions, to help finance construction of new battery cell manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan. .
Last month, the department said it planned to loan up to $700 million to Ioneer Ltd to finance the construction of its rhyolite ridge lithium mining project in Nevada.
The loans are coming from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program. More than 10 years ago, the ATVM program provided low-cost government loans to Tesla, Ford Motor and Nissan Motor, which included some cell manufacturing.
expansion plans
Redwood Materials, founded by ex-Tesla executive Straubel in 2017, is on track to become one of the world’s largest recyclers and remanufacturers of battery materials, including copper, lithium, cobalt and nickel.
In addition to the Nevada site near Reno, Redwood Materials said in December that it planned to build a similar facility northwest of Charleston, South Carolina, also at a cost of about $3.5 billion.
Each facility will have an initial planned capacity to process 100 gigawatt-hours of electrode material, enough to supply more than 1 million EVs each. The South Carolina campus could eventually be expanded to “several hundred gigawatt-hours,” Straubel said.
Straubel said the South Carolina project is running about two years behind the Nevada facility.
Redwood Materials said it will supply copper foil to Panasonic from Nevada for battery cells produced at the Nevada Gigafactory, which Panasonic operates jointly with Tesla. It will also supply cathode material to Panasonic’s new Kansas battery plant, which is expected to open in 2025.
Redwood Materials has supply agreements with several manufacturers including Ford, Toyota Motor and Volkswagen Group.
(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit and David Shepperson in Washington; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
Source: finance.yahoo.com
