Redwood Materials targets 100 gigawatt hours of battery material a year, rising to 500 by 2030

What Redwood says it will make

Redwood Materials, a company that recycles batteries and makes new battery material, says it targets 100 gigawatt hours a year of cathode active material and anode copper foil combined, made across its 2 plants in Nevada and South Carolina. A gigawatt hour measures how much battery cell capacity a factory can supply material for in a year, so a bigger number means material for more battery cells. Cathode active material is the powder that stores energy inside the positive end of a battery cell, and anode copper foil is the thin copper sheet that carries current inside the negative end. Redwood set the 100 gigawatt hour target for the end of 2025, and says output should reach 500 gigawatt hours a year by 2030, 5 times the near term goal, a MAOWCE calculation from the same 2 company figures.

Who is buying the material

Toyota Motor North America has agreed to buy cathode material from Redwood for Toyota Battery Manufacturing North Carolina, a plant due to begin operating in 2025. Toyota requires that material to contain at least 20% recycled nickel, 20% recycled lithium and 50% recycled cobalt. Christopher Yang, Group Vice President, Business Development at Toyota Motor North America, described what the deal is meant to achieve.

Working with Redwood Materials, we are creating a circular supply chain to optimize logistics, expand refining, and ensure that the valuable metals recovered can be reintroduced into our future vehicles.

Christopher Yang, Group Vice President, Business Development, Toyota Motor North America. Source 1.

What is paying for the 2 campuses

Redwood plans to invest 1.1 billion dollars in the Nevada campus over the decade, according to a letter sent by Founder and Chief Executive Officer JB Straubel to the state economic development office in Nevada. Governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina announced that Redwood is investing 3.5 billion dollars in a campus in Berkeley County. The United States Department of Energy Loan Programs Office offered Redwood a conditional loan commitment of 2 billion dollars in February 2023 to help fund the Nevada campus. No source read for this article confirms whether that loan was later finalized, changed or withdrawn, so this article states only that it was offered.

The jobs each site is expected to bring

The Department of Energy says the Nevada campus is expected to support about 3,400 construction jobs while it is being built and about 1,600 full time jobs once it is running. Governor McMaster said the South Carolina campus will create 1,500 jobs in Berkeley County.

What the Nevada campus alone is designed to do

The Department of Energy says the Nevada campus by itself is designed to produce 100,000 metric tons of cathode active material and 36,000 metric tons of anode copper foil a year, output the agency says would support more than 1 million electric vehicles a year. The agency and the governor of South Carolina both say Redwood recovers more than 95% of the critical minerals it processes from batteries that have reached the end of their working life, including nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper. Founder and Chief Executive Officer JB Straubel explained why the company chose to add the South Carolina campus.

South Carolina's commitment to creating a secure energy future made it a smart decision for Redwood to invest here.

JB Straubel, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Redwood Materials. Source 3.