Orbia Ventures, the new-ish corporate venturing unit of specialty products maker Orbia, lead BR’s round, which also included corporate venturing units TDK Ventures, Doral Renewable Energy Resources Group’s Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures and Trumpf Venture, and venture capital firms At One Ventures and Tsingyuan Ventures and MassVentures, Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ strategic venture capital unit for the US state where BR presently operates its single facility.
It is a powerful syndicate for BR, which offers a closed-loop battery cathode supply chain to reduce the cost of electric vehicles and energy storage devices and keep battery waste out of landfills.
Compared to production of virgin cathodes, BR said its material process saves up to 35% in costs, generates 32% less emissions, and recovers more than 97% of metals.
Sherwin Prior, partner at Orbia Ventures, whose parent company has a specialty chemicals unit called Koura, which produces battery electrolyte materials for electric vehicles, said: “We have worked with BR on several joint development projects and were impressed by the depth of their technical and application knowledge around battery recycling.”
It has been really hard to recycle and reuse lithium-ion batteries, which consist of multiple modules sandwiching anodes and cathodes between a porous separator. This is part of the interest behind lithium-metal and solid-state batteries as discussed in the first quarter’s Global Energy Council (GEC) report.
BR’s proprietary methodology takes a spent battery and rebuilds a full battery-grade cathode just as the market for such technology is expected to take off.
Nicolas Sauvage, managing director of TDK Ventures, said: “With the push toward major auto electrification in President Biden’s administration, the US might follow Europe’s recent decree that all lithium-ion batteries must contain a certain quantity of recycled materials by 2025.”
With the series B financing, BR said it would build a commercial-scale battery processing facility to process more than 10,000 tons per year of lithium-ion battery feedstock.
TDK will be holding a discussion (Q&A) on 22 April with its portfolio company BR as part of a roundtable with the Global Energy Group. Other portfolio company Q&As with Chevron-backed Carbon Clean and Shell’s ZeroAvia will also be held before a debate on carbon capture, utilisation and storage plus hydrogen as part of the second quarter report for the GEC released beforehand.
