New Site Reserved in the GigaVaasa Area for establishing Anode Materials Production
Beowulf, is pleased to announce that the Company’s wholly owned Finnish subsidiary Grafintec Oy (“Grafintec”) has signed a site reservation agreement with the municipality of Korsholm, securing Plot 1, Block 3017 in the GigaVaasa area, for the establishment of a Graphite Anode Materials Plant (“GAMP”). The agreement was signed on 13 February 2023 and the reservation is valid for an initial six-month period from signing, with the option to extend.
Over the coming months, Grafintec will work closely with the municipality of Korsholm and other important stakeholders, continue with its Pre-Feasibility Study (“PFS”) announced on 9 January 2023, and in addition parallel workstreams as part of an Environmental Assessment Impact (“EIA”) programme. Grafintec intends to apply for a long-term site reservation for Plot 1 before the end of July 2023.
Plot 1 covers an area of approximately 47 hectares and is located immediately to the south-southeast of the area where FREYR, the battery cell manufacturing company, has secured land to develop industrial scale battery technology and production (see FREYR Battery begins preparatory work in Vaasa, Finland | Gigavaasa).
While a number of European graphite anode materials projects are in planning, there remains a real risk that regional supply will fail to satisfy demand for several years. Seeing the opportunity, Grafintec is collaborating with its technology partner Qingdao Hensen Graphite Ltd (“Hensen”) and the Engineering Consultancy RB Plant Construction Ltd. (“RB Plant”) to fast-track the development of GAMP. Funding by Business Finland as part of the BATCircle2.0 (Finland-based Circular Ecosystem of Battery Metals) consortium will be used to develop state-of-the art technological solutions to provide sustainable and high-quality precursor anode materials to the European battery cell manufacturing industry.