Coal tar derivatives company Epsilon Carbon is planning to invest up to Rs 500 crore ($67 million) over the next five years to manufacture graphite anode materials for lithium-ion batteries in India.
Introducing itself to the battery material business, the Karnataka, India-based firm, plans to establish a 50,000 tonne per year anode material manufacturing capacity by 2025.
The battery material business will be conducted by its subsidiary, Epsilon Advanced Materials.
The subsidiary aims to supply synthetic graphite material to cell manufacturers and “energy storage device companies” across the globe.
The company has commissioned its manufacturing facility in Ballari, Karnataka, to produce 5,000 tonne per annum (tpa) of anode material annually. It plans to triple this capacity to 15,000 tpa in 2021 and. 50,000 tpa by 2025.
Epsilon Advanced Materials will also establish a research and development laboratory looking at carbon material and pouch lithium battery cell testing to improve the quality of the material.
The announcement comes after two years of work by Epsilon Carbon to develop a new, environmentally friendly process to produce high-performance graphite anode material.