Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world's largest manufacturer of rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, has acquired a 20% stake in New Zealand-based CarbonScape. Hong Kong investment company Lochpine also joined the investment as a strategic shareholder. The value of the deal was not disclosed, but it grants CATL board representation at CarbonScape and positions the Chinese company as a key industrialization partner.
CarbonScape has developed a proprietary process that converts forestry byproducts into battery-grade graphite, capable of achieving cost parity with conventional graphite and boasting a carbon-negative footprint. This innovation is crucial as graphite constitutes the largest material component in lithium-ion batteries by weight, making up to 50% of the anode mass. Each electric vehicle contains roughly 50-100 kg of graphite, more than other critical battery materials combined. Global demand for battery-grade graphite is projected to increase sixfold between 2025 and 2040.
The partnership aims to accelerate the commercial scale-up and deployment of CarbonScape's sustainable bio-based graphite materials. The collaboration will combine CarbonScape’s biographite technology with CATL’s extensive experience in industrialization, manufacturing, and large-scale deployment. Both companies plan to validate CarbonScape’s technology at a demonstration scale using CATL facilities before preparing for full-scale commercial plants, with a target to bring commercial biographite production online by the end of the decade. CarbonScape, which operates a pilot plant in New Zealand, is targeting commercial deployment in Europe and other markets, aiming to secure 20% of the graphite market share in both Europe and North America by 2030 using domestic forestry products as feedstock.
Automakers and policymakers are actively seeking low-carbon, locally sourced, and cost-competitive anode materials for battery supply chains in regions like the US and Europe. CarbonScape’s technology addresses this need by enabling graphite production from widely available forestry byproducts, supporting regional supply chains and helping manufacturers meet increasingly stringent sustainability and regulatory requirements. CATL executive president Oscar Luo emphasized that sustainable innovation across the battery value chain is essential for the global energy transition, highlighting CarbonScape's technology as a breakthrough in material science with its novel method for producing battery-grade graphite from renewable resources.
