June 23, 2022: Gigafactories developer Freyr Battery said on June 15 it had signed a further battery materials deal with two companies to supply its customer qualification plant being built in Norway.
Freyr said China-based Changzhou Senior New Energy Materials and Senior Material (Europe), based in Sweden, have reserved unspecified supplies of separator material through 2028 and Freyr has an option to extend supplies until 2031.
The supply deal follows Freyr’s signing of nine agreements with key battery material suppliers, announced on February 2, for “more than 90%” of its raw material requirements for initial facilities, including the customer qualification plant.
Executive vice president of supply chain management for Freyr, Tilo Hauke, said the latest agreement “ensures that we won’t lose any speed when it comes to securing the required separator materials to start production at our customer qualification plant and Gigafactory 1 & 2”.
Changzhou Senior is a pre-qualified supplier of 24M Technologies — which signed a licensing agreement in 2020 for Freyr to have unlimited production of lithium ion battery cells based on its SemiSolid technology.
Robin Olsson, Senior Material COO, said the intention was to eventually meet Freyr’s supply needs through the firm’s facility in Sweden, “which aligns well with Freyr’s mission to source materials as locally as possible”.
Freyr plans to develop up to 43GWh of battery cell production capacity by 2025, with an ambition of up to 83GWh in total capacity by 2028.