Redwood Materials, known to be founded by a former Tesla co-founder is moving on to its next phase. It is going to build its next Battery Materials Campus outside of South Caroline. It is going to be more than 600 acres that can recycle, refine and manufacture anode and cathode components. With this facility, it will be creating 1,500 jobs with an investment of $3.5 billion in the local community.
This campus will produce 100 GWh of cathode and anode components per year—enough to power more than one million EVs. The site also provides the company the opportunity to expand operations potentially to several hundred GWh annually to meet future demand.
Redwood takes in end-of-life batteries, break them down to their basic metals (such as nickel, copper, cobalt, and lithium) and then rebuilds those metals into cathode and anode products. Currently, anode and cathode components are not produced in North America, and battery cell manufacturers have to source them via a 50,000+ mile global supply chain. As a result, US battery manufacturers will spend more than $150 billion overseas on these components by 2030, Redwood says.
Operations
Redwood plans to break ground on our Carolina Campus in Q1 2023 and have the first recycling process running by the end of 2023. Similar to the Nevada operations, Redwood’s South Carolina operations will be 100% electric and won’t use any fossil fuel. The company will source only zero-emission, clean energy; the plant design and manufacturing process will allow the company to reduce the CO2 emissions associated with producing these components by about 80% compared to the current Asia-based supply chain.
South Carolina has been home to the automotive industry for nearly three decades with more than 500 automotive companies and 72,000 autoworkers. The announcement highlights the explosive growth within Redwood Materials, which last year raised $700 million in a Series C round led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates and that included Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Baillie Gifford, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Fidelity.
Earlier this year, Redwood landed a multibillion-dollar deal to supply Panasonic Energy of North America with cathode material for battery cells produced at a new factory currently under construction in Kansas. The new $4 billion Panasonic factory, which will be larger than the Tesla Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, is expected to begin mass production of its “2170” cylindrical lithium-ion batteries by March 2025. Redwood added that there’s potential to expand its operations at the site to several hundred GWh annually to meet future demand.
