Bristol, UK-based battery technology startup Anaphite has raised £1.4 million via the UKRI’s Innovate UK Investor Partnership Programme to expand its DCP (Dry-Coating Precursor) technology platform used to engineer homogenous composite powders for dry coating of NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) cathodes meant to enable high-throughput, high-yield production of dry coated LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cathodes and graphite anodes. The total is a combination of £700,000 in grant funding from Innovate UK Investor Partnerships’ Clean Energy and Climate Technologies competition and £700,000 of investment from climate-focused venture capital funds Elbow Beach, one of the UK’s most active seed investors, and World Fund, a leading European venture capital fund.

“We’re thrilled to have secured this grant support from Innovate UK and the matching investment from Elbow Beach, World Fund, and other Anaphite investors,” said Joe Stevenson, CEO of Anaphite. “This enables us to attack one of the toughest technical challenges in dry coating—successfully manufacturing LFP electrodes. Once achieved at scale, it will be enormously valuable to the industry. Anaphite’s DCP technology has been successful with NMC dry coating formulations, and we’re confident it can be applied to LFP to further boost the cost and carbon emission savings for OEMs.”

Founded in Bristol in 2018 by CTO Sam Burrow and COO Alex Hewitt, Anaphite is on a mission to decarbonize battery-cell manufacturing. As global battery demand grows, the company’s leaders say that the current method used to make electrodes must change because it is energy-intensive, expensive, and releases tons of carbon dioxide. Dry coating offers a cleaner, more efficient alternative, cutting energy use by around 30%, but it is difficult for battery manufacturers and EV OEMs to achieve at industrial scales.

According to the startup, manufacturing LFP cathodes is more than twice as energy-intensive per kW·h of battery cells produced as for NMC cathodes featuring a medium-to-high nickel content. It says that optimizing the material mixing and electrode coating processes, which account for 30-40% of total cell manufacturing energy and cost, is a clear route to transformational cost and carbon footprint savings for battery cell makers and EV (electric vehicle) (OEMs) original equipment manufacturers.

“Anaphite’s technology is broadly applicable across next-generation and established battery technologies alike,” said Craig Douglas, Partner at World Fund. “This investment will enable the company to significantly expand its commercial capabilities, accelerating the scale-up of its manufacturing processes and driving down manufacturing costs for the global battery industry.”

With LFP forecast to account for more than 55% of global cathode demand by 2030, according to McKinsey, the demand for technologies that enable dry coating of LFP cathodes is high. However, manufacturing dry-coated LFP cathodes is even more challenging than with NMC, with no commercial-scale technology proven today. With OEMs needing to meet growing consumer demand and legislative requirements, including the potential bans on new combustion engine vehicles from 2030 and 2035 in the UK and Europe, respectively, the company says that a mass production solution is urgently needed.

The latest generation of LFP, called Gen IV, has particle sizes between 0.7-3.0 micron compared to 3-20 micron for NMC. The much higher surface area of LFP particles introduces significant new challenges to homogenous mixing and dry film formation with LFP formulations when compared to NMC.

Anaphite believes that, with its experience of working with nanomaterials and expertise in dry coating, it is uniquely placed to solve the challenges of LFP dry electrode formulation and coating. The company’s existing DCP technology platform uses proprietary chemical compositing techniques to disperse difficult-to-mix materials such as binders and conductive carbons, attaching them to active material particles. This approach overcomes the limitations of other mixing techniques, which are proving ineffective at producing LFP dry coating materials.

Key outcomes of the project include the successful production of dry-coated LFP cathodes and graphite anodes using the roll-to-roll coating techniques used in mass production. These will be combined into a full cell build for testing.

Demonstrating maximized first-cycle efficiency and cycle life will validate Anaphite technology’s ability to overcome the challenges of LFP and graphite dry coating. This will unlock dry coating for a broader range of mass market electrode materials and strengthen the company’s collaboration with global OEMs seeking to reduce the cost and environmental impact of their battery cells.

“The future of driving is electric, so scaling up affordable, low-carbon battery manufacturing is essential,” said Jonathan Pollock, CEO of Elbow Beach. “Anaphite’s technology has the potential to significantly cut both costs and carbon footprint for battery makers and EV manufacturers, and we’re excited to support them as they lead the way in this critical sector.”

With batteries and the automotive industry highlighted as priority areas in the UK Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Plan, this project will support the UK’s Industrial Strategy and drive further growth of a strategically important technology for global OEMs. It will also help to support continued growth in the BESS (battery energy storage system) sector, which is expected to account for the majority of new storage capacity added in the UK by 2030, by which time LFP is expected to be the most widely used chemistry, according to a recent Faraday Institution report.