According to the firm on Thursday, Epsilon Advanced Materials (EAM) of India intends to build a $650 million plant in North Carolina in 2026 to produce EV battery materials and components, which may eventually supply up to 1.1 million electric vehicles in the country.
The Mumbai-based EAM, a division of Epsilon Carbon, announced that it will use both synthetic and natural graphite to create anodes, the negative electrodes in batteries. EAM stated that it is in talks with suppliers about the sourcing of raw materials, including natural graphite, as it also intends to produce synthetic graphite at the plant.
EAM as a top EV battery producer
Situated southwest of Wilmington in Brunswick County, the manufacturing facility will be a component of the state’s emerging EV battery cluster. EAM stated that it is in advanced discussions to purchase its products from many EV battery makers, but it did not identify the firms.
The company’s initiative to establish a fresh domestic supply of synthetic graphite and anodes may lessen dependency on components and materials imported from China. China, which regulates the supply of graphite, recently restricted exports of the mineral.
The materials and components of an EV battery manufactured in the United States by EAM are probably eligible for incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act and other U.S. laws that support the development of domestic supply chains for EVs and batteries.
“We believe that limiting the amount of graphite exported from China—and likely the price increase for graphite that it will create—exacerbates the challenges (and) exemplifies the need to develop synthetic graphite for the U.S. locally,” Sunit Kapur, our chief executive, said in a statement to a news agency.
EAM projects that the North Carolina facility will be operating at maximum capacity by 2031, producing 50,000 standard tons of anode materials annually. According to research firm Fastmarkets, which projects that Chinese production of the material would increase from roughly 1.6 million metric tons this year to 2 million in 2030, China is the world leader in the manufacture of synthetic graphite.
