Redwood Materials Joins Electric Vehicle, Battery Trek To South Carolina

Redwood Supplies is the most recent organization to set up shop in South Carolina’s developing community of electric powered vehicle and battery producers, the Carson Town, Nevada-based mostly company explained on Wednesday.

Redwood reported it will establish a $3.5 billion battery components campus in Ridgefield, about 30 miles (48.28 km) northwest of Charleston, that will recycle, refine and remanufacture cathode and anode products this sort of as nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper.

Anode and cathode elements, which make up most of an EV battery’s cost, are not nevertheless developed in North America.

But various businesses have introduced strategies to make those people components in North The usa by mid-decade, to take benefit of incentives developed into the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. The IRS aims to lessen imports of batteries and supplies from China, which controls the flow of refined minerals these as nickel and cobalt.

The Ridgefield facility aims to begin recycling late following calendar year and ramp up element manufacturing potential to 100 gigawatt-hours by 2025 — enough to provide battery supplies for far more than a million electric powered vehicles, the enterprise mentioned.

The Redwood Components campus, which is situated close to the U.S. assembly plant for Volvo and Polestar electrical cars, has the capacity to develop to 400 GWh, which would have to have many billion dollars of added expense, a organization formal said.

The Ridgefield facility is envisioned to provide battery materials to Ford Motor and SK On in Kentucky, Toyota Motor in North Carolina and Volvo and Visualize AESC in South Carolina.

South Carolina currently is house to car suppliers BMW in Greer, Mercedes-Benz Vans in North Charleston, Arrival in Rock Hill and Proterra in Greenville and Greer.

Volvo is developing a battery plant following to its assembly facility in Ridgeville and BMW is partnering with Envision AESC on a $700 million battery plant in Woodruff.

A next North American “battery belt” is springing up in Canada, in Becancour, Quebec, on the St. Lawrence River.

Among the the firms planning or taking into consideration investments in battery materials refining and producing amenities there are Normal Motors, Ford and Volkswagen, as properly as suppliers SK, BASF and Posco Chemical and mining/refining businesses Umicore and Nouveau Monde.