Soelect, a High Point-based battery component developer, and Lotte Chemical, a Korean chemical maker, have entered into a joint venture to create a lithium metal anode manufacturing facility in the United States.
Soelect and Lotte Chemical signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday intending to establish a joint venture company to ramp up production of Soelect’s lithium metal anode for next generation batteries. They are investing $204 million in the project.
While it has a Greensboro mailing address, Soelect is located on Federal Drive in High Point's Piedmont Centre office park. Founded in 2018, Soelect develops solid-state battery components to be used for electric vehicles, portable electronics, power tools, drones, aircraft and other energy storage uses. Through its proprietary lithium-based metal foil, Soelect uses an advanced lithium anode technology — LiX — that exceeds the power of typical lithium-ion batteries.
Soelect also uses a polymer-based solid-state electrolyte instead of the usual liquid electrolytes used in lithium-ion batteries. In doing so, Soelect aims to help make batteries more efficient and less expensive.
The company’s battery technology can reach 100% charge in 15 minutes and shows 80% capacity retention over 400 use cycles. The two components that Soelect has developed can be used individually or together to better the life of a battery.
In February, Soelect raised $11 million in Series A financing from three major investors – Lotte Ventures, General Motors Ventures and Korean venture capital firm KTB Network. Through a fund sponsored by Lotte Chemical, Lotte Ventures was the lead investor.
“We are thrilled to be entering into the memorandum of understanding and initiate our partnership with Lotte Chemical, the world’s leading chemical manufacturer,” said Sung-Jin Cho, CEO and founder of Soelect. “The joint venture with Lotte Chemical will play a critical role in scaling-up our lithium metal anode capacity and potentially meet the domestic battery and electric vehicle supply value chain demand in the United States, a key objective of the current U.S. presidential administration.”
By establishing a joint venture company with Lotte Chemical, Soelect will be able to increase its current pilot production capacity from mega-scale to giga-scale.
In terms of production, giga-scale is 1GWh (giga watt-hour) equivalent anode component production. A watt-hour is a unit of energy equal to one watt of power expended over one hour of time. So, when a battery manufacturer buys an entire volume of Soelect’s annual production at a giga-scale, the manufacturer can produce 1GWh of batteries.
The initial target production volume for the joint manufacturing venture is 200MWh (mega watt-hours, less than a giga watt-hour) and Soelect will gradually increase production, planning to hit 1GWh volume by 2025.
The new joint venture company is expected to invest $204 million in the joint venture in phases beginning this year. Soelect declined to disclose where the investment is coming from.
Once the initial production volume target is reached, Soelect’s LiX technology should support the industry-standard automotive qualification. At that point, further expansion opportunities will be evaluated by both companies.
“By combining Lotte Chemical’s material technology and global business presence with Soelect’s lithium metal anode technology, Lotte Chemical will quickly secure the core technologies for next-generation batteries in the global market,” said Young Joon Lee, president of the battery material business unit at Lotte. “We will actively target the future global battery market, centering on the United States, where demand for electric vehicles provides significant opportunity to be a major supplier in the U.S. domestic battery supply chain.”
Lotte Chemical is seeking to create a battery materials company specializing in electrode foils, separators and organic solvents for electrolytes.
Exact locations for the joint venture company and its manufacturing facility have not been decided. Soelect and Lotte Chemical are expected to formalize the joint venture company by the end of the year.
