Brisbane-based mining minnow Graphitecorp is buying the rest of Novonix, a battery testing equipment provider based in Canada.
Graphitecorp, which is developing a graphite mine in western Queensland, Australia, bought two-thirds of Novonix in March. Now it has agreed to buy the remaining third from Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), a lithium-ion battery maker in China. The deal is due for completion on 1 June.
Graphitecorp says it will fund the purchase “from existing cash resources” and aims to use the new relationship with CATL to expand its material supply business in the lithium battery sector.
CATL has lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities in China and offices in Sweden, Germany and France. It plans to build an additional lithium-ion factory in Europe.
Philip St Baker (pictured), managing director of Graphitecorp, said: “We’ve spent a lot of time studying the whole graphite market and it became clear to us the biggest opportunity was the value added in turning to anodes for batteries.”
The new acquisition, together with the company’s PUREgraphite anode material production joint venture with Coulometrics in the USA, has transformed the business from mining into a supplier of advanced battery materials, equipment and services to the global lithium battery market.
“What we are doing with these transactions is moving from source to manufacturing of the finished product, which will be a combination of natural and synthetic graphite,” St Baker added.
Novonix was spun out of Dr Jeff Dahn’s research laboratory at Dalhousie University, which signed an exclusive five-year research partnership with Tesla in 2015 to develop longer-lasting lithium-ion batteries.
In less than three years, Novonix has deployed more than 1,000 of its High Precision Coulometry (HPC) battery testing units in 12 countries. It counts Panasonic among its clients.
Earlier this month, Novonix launched its new 20Amp HPC testing system and is currently installing the first such unit at a major battery manufacturer.