Australia-based Novonix Limited has said its new fully-commissioned lithium-ion battery cell pilot manufacturing line in Canada will “accelerate” R&D cycle time and reduce costs.
The Nova Scotia facility will support R&D into “a wide range of battery material”. Novonix said the “initial focus” will be on supporting the company’s ‘Pure Graphite’ anode material production joint venture with Coulometrics in the US.
Novonix said the pilot line will manufacture full-size cylindrical and pouch format batteries to commercial standards and support in-house development activities and the provision of commercial battery development services to original equipment manufacturers and others.
Novonix chief operating officer Dr Chris Burns said the company’s “new capability to build high quality, high performance battery cells provided a significant competitive advantage for its battery materials development and battery testing technologies”.
The new line “enables the manufacturing of high-performance batteries incorporating all processes from slurry making, electrode coating, calendering, winding, and assembly”, Burns said.
Novonix, a battery testing equipment provider, 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.
Novonix was acquired by Australian mining minnow Graphitecorp (which later changed its name to Novonix Limited) in 2017.
