Redwood Materials has announced that it has received conditional commitment for a $2 billion loan from the DOE’s Loan Program Office.
Redwood says it will draw upon this milestone-based financing in tranches that support their phased construction and allows them to unlock funding as they accelerate the construction and expansion of their first battery materials campus.
Redwood has said that it aims to produce more local battery components and is committed to facing this challenge by manufacturing cathode and anode components in the US. It will also produce them from an increasing amount of recycled content.
Last month, Redwood began producing anode copper foil at their Northern Nevada facility, marking exactly one year from the initial site groundbreaking to start of production.
Phase One of copper foil is now complete and later this year, the company expects to begin cathode qualification.
As part of the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loans Program, the Department of Energy has awarded the company $2 billion as a result of the work that has been done. Redwood has said that they expect to create 3,400 good-paying construction jobs and employ approximately 1,600 full-time employees.
The company have said that they will produce 100GWh annually of ultra-thin battery-grade copper foil and cathode-active materials from both new and recycled feedstocks at gigafactory scale in the United States for the first time. This is said to provide enough battery materials to produce more than a million electric vehicles a year domestically.
Redwood have been working closely with the Loans Programs Office for more than a year and have undergone an extensive diligence process that thoroughly reviewed their technology, the company’s ability to repay the loan, product demand, and dozens of other factors to get to this stage.
The project allows battery and automotive manufacturers to meet the new stringent critical mineral and battery component requirements for consumers to qualify for electric vehicle tax credits as established by the Inflation Reduction Act recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden.
Press release and picture: Redwood Materials
