Advanced materials technology company Sylvatex (SVX) announced a new proprietary waterless production method that delivers premium EV-grade cathode active materials (CAM) at lower costs and that allows for a broader material input supply base to enable demand growth.

The company expects that its simpler and more sustainable approach to CAM production can enable a 25% reduction in CAM cost, a 40% reduction in plant capital requirements, and up to an 80% reduction in energy usage.

Source: Sylvatex

SVX recently closed a Series A funding of $8.4 million, with Catalus Capital serving as the lead investor, along with Amplify Capital and How Women Invest, and others to support commercializing and scaling its technology. The company has also received additional grant financing from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, and others. SVX continues to collaborate with battery industry experts and collaborators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.

Global lithium-ion battery capacity is expected to rise up to ten-fold in the next decade. CAM is the most expensive component and the bottleneck in the production of lithium-ion batteries; the CAM market alone is projected to grow to $189 billion by 2032. Improvements to the manufacturing of CAM are critical to meeting the long-term demand for batteries and exceeding EV automakers’ cost reduction targets.

To meet increasing EV demands, about 100 additional CAM plants (or 5 million additional tons) will need to be in production by 2032. Today’s cathode production methods would require $200 billion in manufacturing capital deployed and twenty billion gallons of water consumed annually—the equivalent water use of 182,000 American homes. SVX’s new method eliminates water use while delivering substantial cost reductions and using 80% less energy.

SVX’s technology also enables flexibility on raw material inputs, such as transition or recycled metal oxides, which reduces geo-political and other supply chain risks while lowering the cost of the EV battery.

In less than twelve months, the company has scaled its technology a hundred-fold from bench-scale to pilot-scale. SVX is collaborating with several top-tier EV automotive manufacturers and supply chain partners on qualifying materials and further scaling processes.