Anaphite raises £1.4million, through Innovate UK Investor Partnership Programme, for a dedicated LFP cathode and graphite anode dry coating project.

Anaphite has successfully raised £1.4 million in funding, via the Innovate UK Investor Partnership Programme. The sum is a combination of £700,000 in grant funding from Innovate UK Investor Partnerships: Clean Energy and Climate Technologies competition, alongside £700,000 of aligned investment from climate-focused venture capital funds Elbow Beach and World Fund. With it, we will expand our DCP® technology platform – used to engineer homogenous dry composite powders for dry coating of NMC cathodes – to enable high-throughput, high-yield production of dry coated LFP cathodes and graphite anodes.

Manufacturing LFP cathodes is more than twice as energy intensive per kWh of battery cells produced than for NMC cathodes featuring a medium-to-high Nickel content. Optimising the material mixing and electrode coating processes, which account for 30-40% of total cell manufacturing energy and cost, is a clear route to transformational cost and carbon footprint savings for battery cell makers and electric vehicle manufacturers (OEMs).

With LFP forecast to account for more than 55% of global cathode demand by 2031, the demand for technologies that enable dry coating of LFP cathodes is high. However, manufacturing dry coated LFP cathodes is even more challenging than with NMC, with no commercial-scale technology proven today. With OEMs needing to meet growing consumer demand and to meet legislative requirements including bans on new combustion engine vehicles from 2030 and 2035 in the UK and Europe respectively, a mass production solution is urgently needed.

CEO Joe Stevenson says: “We’re thrilled to have secured this grant support from Innovate UK and the matching investment from Elbow Beach, World Fund and other Anaphite investors. This enables us to attack one of the toughest technical challenges in dry coating – successfully manufacturing LFP electrodes. Once achieved at scale, it will be enormously valuable to the industry. Anaphite’s DCP® technology has been successful with NMC dry coating formulations, and we’re confident it can be applied to LFP, to further boost the cost and carbon emission savings for OEMs.”

The latest generations of LFP (called Gen IV) have particle sizes between 0.7-3 microns compared to 3-20 microns for NMC. The much higher surface area of LFP particles introduces significant new challenges to homogenous mixing and dry film formation with LFP formulations when compared to NMC.

With our extensive experience of working with nanomaterials and deep expertise in dry coating, we are uniquely placed to solve the challenges of LFP dry electrode formulation and coating. Our existing DCP® technology platform uses proprietary chemical compositing techniques to disperse difficult-to-mix materials such as binders and conductive carbons, attaching them to active material particles. This approach overcomes the limitations of other mixing techniques, which are proving ineffective at producing LFP dry coating materials.

Craig Douglas, Partner at World Fund comments: “Anaphite’s technology is broadly applicable across next-generation and established battery technologies alike. This investment will enable the company to significantly expand its commercial capabilities, accelerating the scale-up of its manufacturing processes and driving down manufacturing costs for the global battery industry.”

Key outcomes of the project include successful production of dry coated LFP cathodes and graphite anodes using the roll-to-roll coating techniques used in mass production. These will be combined into a full cell build for testing. Demonstrating maximised first cycle efficiency and cycle life will validate Anaphite technology’s ability to overcome the challenges of LFP and graphite dry coating. This will unlock dry coating for a broader range of mass market electrode materials and strengthen our collaboration with global OEMs seeking to reduce the cost and environmental impact of their battery cells.

With batteries and the automotive industry highlighted as priority areas in the UK Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Plan, this project will support the UK’s Industrial Strategy and drive further growth of a strategically important technology for global OEMs. It will also help to support continued growth in the BESS sector: this is expected to account for the majority of new storage capacity added in the UK by 2030, by which time LFP is expected to be the most widely used chemistry.

Jonathan Pollock, CEO at Elbow Beach concludes: “The future of driving is electric, so scaling up affordable, low-carbon battery manufacturing is essential. Anaphite’s technology has the potential to significantly cut both costs and carbon footprint for battery makers and EV manufacturers, and we’re excited to support them as they lead the way in this critical sector.”