Swedish Battery Materials Firm Altris AB Ventures Into China

China’s vice like grip on battery manufacturing means that firms find it simply impossible to ignore the massive manufacturing and consumption market. The latest is Swedish battery materials company Altris AB which has officially opened its first office in China. The Guangzhou-based team will work to promote the company’s innovative cathode material, Fennac®, to the Chinese market, as well as provide tailored local support to new and existing customers. Getting acceptance in the Chinese market is one way to achieve scale, as firms understand only too well. Top Chinese manufacturers like CATL virtually decide the direction of the battery industry, thanks to their dominance and critical role as OEM’s for EV manufacturers around the world.

Altris describes Fennac as high sodium content Prussian White powder which is a cathode material for the next generation of environmentally friendly sodium ion batteries. Composition is Na_xFe[Fe(CN)₆] with x>1.9. This material is ideal as performance positive electrode in sodium-ion batteries and can be paired against anode materials which do not contain sodium.

The opening of the new office comes at a time where interest in producing sodium-ion batteries is high and when there is generally a global increased demand for batteries. Chinese battery giant CATL also recently declared that they believe the performance of sodium-ion batteries to be roughly the same, or even better than the lithium-ion batteries they currently produce, in all aspects. CATL has led the way and has announced that there will be a value chain to produce such batteries by 2023.

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Since CATL’s announcement, interest in Fennac® has notably increased. As interest in Altris’ product grows in China, the local sales and support team will expand to match customer’s needs. The company is also planning to scale up production of Fennac® to an industrial level in 2022. This includes the building of a new industrial scale manufacturing unit in Sweden, with the annual capacity to produce 2,000 tonnes of the cathode Fennac®, enabling 1GWh of sustainable batteries.

Altris specialises in producing highly sustainable cathode materials for rechargeable sodium batteries. It claims to make the world’s first high performing cathode material made from completely renewable and low cost materials.