Redwood Materials will build its next Battery Materials Campus just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. At Camp Hall in Berkeley County, Redwood will recycle, refine and manufacture anode and cathode components on more than 600 acres, creating more than 1,500 jobs and investing $3.5 billion in the local community.

Eventually, this campus will produce 100 GWh of cathode and anode components per year—enough to power more than one million EVs. The site also provides the company the opportunity to expand operations potentially to several hundred GWh annually to meet future demand.

Redwood takes in end-of-life batteries, break them down to their basic metals (such as nickel, copper, cobalt, and lithium) and then rebuilds those metals into cathode and anode products. Currently, anode and cathode components are not produced in North America, and battery cell manufacturers have to source them via a 50,000+ mile global supply chain. As a result, US battery manufacturers will spend more than $150 billion overseas on these components by 2030, Redwood says.

A corridor from Michigan to Georgia is becoming known as the “Battery Belt” and is where hundreds of GWh a year of battery cell production capacity will be built and start operating between now and 2030. Map via Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Redwood plans to break ground on our Carolina Campus in Q1 2023 and have the first recycling process running by the end of 2023.

Similar to the Nevada operations, Redwood’s South Carolina operations will be 100% electric and won’t use any fossil fuel. The company will source only zero-emission, clean energy; the plant design and manufacturing process will allow the company to reduce the CO₂ emissions associated with producing these components by about 80% compared to the current Asia-based supply chain.

South Carolina has been home to the automotive industry for nearly three decades with more than 500 automotive companies and 72,000 autoworkers.