- Volt Resources (VRC) is in the process of entering into a strategic collaboration with alkaline battery producer, Urban Electric Power (UEP)
- Volt and its technical partner in the United States, America Energy Technologies, will focus on non-spherical graphite materials to increase alkaline battery performance
- Volt’s graphite output from Zavalievsky in Europe will be integrated with the Bunyu graphite plant in Tanzania to manufacture non-spherical graphite products
- According to the business, the alkaline battery industry is worth US$7.5 billion (A$10.5 billion) each year, with 12 billion battery cells requiring over 14,000 tonnes of graphite
- Volt Resources shares are up 8 per cent to trade at 2.7 cents at 10:48 am AEDT
Volt Resources (VRC) is in the process of entering into a strategic collaboration with alkaline battery producer, Urban Electric Power (UEP).
Under the joint development agreement UEP, Volt and its technology partner in the US, America Energy Technologies (AETC), will focus on non-spherical graphite products to improve alkaline battery performance.
The company says this will also benefit the end-users, consumers of UEP’s alkaline battery technologies, by offering a more attractive cost structure than the currently available industry solutions on the market.
The companies expect to finalise the agreement in January 2022, with UEP and Volt planning to enter into an offtake agreement for the supply of ultra-high purity graphite-based coatings and potential licensing benefits.
The non-spherical purified graphite is made as a by-product of the spheroidization of purified graphite when producing lithium-ion battery anode material (BAM).
Volt says it’s leveraging the ‘inverted’ flowsheet developed by AETC to also produce non-spherical material which can be used in applications such as conductivity enhancement and other specialty uses.
The development of these non-spherical graphite products will improve the economics of Volt’s planned BAM facilities in the US and Europe leveraging its current production capability from the Zavalievsky graphite business in Europe combined with the Bunyu graphite project in Tanzania.
Urban Electric Power chief technology advisor, Alex Couzis, says the company is excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Volt.
“Volt is a very innovative company in the area of graphite’s and mixing and they’re open culture toward collaboration is inspiring,” he said.
Volt managing director, Trevor Matthews, also commented.
“Volt views the alkaline battery market as a tremendous opportunity to participate in a sector with annual sales of US$7.5 billion,” he said.
“This collaboration introduces Volt to the US battery market and the board expects the JDA will accelerate the commercialisation of Volt’s downstream value-added graphite products in various battery applications.”
Volt Resources shares are up 8 per cent to trade at 2.7 cents at 10:48 am AEDT.