Mining heavyweight Rio Tinto is shopping for into Canada’s evolving battery know-how business by a US$10-million funding and partnership take care of Vancouver-based Nano One Supplies Corp.
The U.Okay.-headquartered miner, which has numerous aluminum, diamond and iron operations in Canada, will purchase a roughly five-per-cent stake in Nano One as a part of the settlement. It should additionally work with the Canadian firm on utilizing iron powders from Rio Tinto’s Sorel-Tracy, Que. plant within the manufacturing of cathode lively materials (CAM), a key enter in electrical automobile batteries.
The 2 corporations introduced the funding and collaboration deal at a Rio Tinto facility in Montreal June 9, alongside Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s minister of pure sources.
“The transition to net-zero is now a aggressive race between the world’s economies and enterprises, and I’m actually happy to say, as evidenced by this undertaking introduced right this moment, that Canada is more and more on the entrance of the pack,” Wilkinson mentioned on the press convention.
Nano One CEO Dan Blondal mentioned the deal will assist help the corporate’s scale-up, offering it with a companion with deep, high-volume mining expertise and a rising battery supplies enterprise.
“This brings horsepower and the type of know-how that may propel us right into a terawatt-hour-era of lithium-ion battery supplies.”
Quebec is rapidly turning into a hotbed for CAM manufacturing. In March, each German chemical agency BASF and a three way partnership between South Korea’s Posco Chemical and Common Motors introduced plans to construct industrial-scale battery supplies crops in Bécancour.
Together with iron powders sourced from Quebec, the brand new strategic collaboration deal will take a look at a variety of Rio Tinto metals merchandise, together with lithium, in Nano One’s CAM manufacturing course of.
The take care of Rio Tinto is the third main improvement for Nano One in as many weeks. The battery know-how agency introduced a joint improvement settlement with BASF Could 31, a couple of days after disclosing its plan to purchase Johnson Matthey Battery Supplies Canada. That $10.3 million deal consists of the British firm’s cathode lively materials plant in Candiac, Que., which has been producing lithium iron phosphate batteries — a kind of lithium-ion battery — since 2012.
As soon as the deal for Johnson Matthey’s Canadian battery operations closes, Blondal mentioned the Quebec facility will function a “launchpad” for Nano One’s progress plans. The corporate has developed new know-how to simplify the CAM manufacturing course of, and in the end goals to provide product to cell crops constructing batteries for automotive, amongst different industries.
Nano One will put Rio Tinto’s funding within the firm towards its pending acquisition of the Candiac plant and wider plans to provide CAM on a bigger scale.