Invest in Redwood Materials

Redwood employs hydrometallurgical processes to repurpose spent lithium-ion batteries, retrieving valuable minerals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium. Typically, these minerals are procured from foreign mines, many of which are located in regions with questionable labor rights and environmental safeguards.

Redwood Materials provides a consumer recycling program and a partnership program for enterprises.

For the consumer program, Redwood offers consumers multiple channels to recycle their electronic goods, such as direct shipping, collection binds, and local events.

The largest source of lithium and cobalt are in the junk drawers of America. Redwood recycles phones, laptops, tablets, power tools, and any other battery or lithium-ion device.

Redwood Materials also partners directly with dealers and dismantlers to recover, safely package, transport, and recycle all end-of-life hybrid and electric vehicle battery packs.

Redwood provides multiple solutions, such as recycling, refining, and remanufacturing.

Redwood’s recycling service includes: (1) Safe transportation and handling of lithium battery materials, (2) Discharging of live cells, modules, and packs, (3) Safe conversion of hazardous compounds including electrolytes and fluorine compounds, and (4) Minimization of all waste products such as plastics.

Redwood’s refining service includes: (1) Breaking down and rebuilding batteries into high-precision copper foil and cathode material, (2) Refining of recycling intermediates, (3) Separation of unique elements and compounds (Ni, Co, Cu, Li), and (4) Purification of metals and chemicals to meet the standards required for direct incorporation into the production of battery materials.

Redwood’s Remanufacturing includes: (1) Producing battery copper foils and cathode active material, (2) High-value material manufacturing of dedicated products, (3) Production of cathode precursor material, and (4) Production of anode copper foil – electrodeposition from copper sulfate solution .

Redwood claims they can recover more than 95% of the metals (including nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper) from batteries and use the metals to remanufacture anode and cathode components.

In turn, Redwood manufactures cathode active materials and anode copper foil, subsequently providing these components back to U.S. battery cell manufacturers, ensuring the metals remain within the country throughout the process.

On October 13th, 2022, Argonne National Laboratory, a leading research institution in science and engineering under the U.S. Department of Energy, conducted tests on metal-sulfates recycled by Redwood to assess their effectiveness in cathode material for battery cell production. The findings revealed that cathode materials crafted from Redwood's recycled metal-sulfates matched the original mined metals in terms of cycle-life performance, discharge capacity, and Coulombic efficiency. Additionally, specific tests on rate capability and area-specific impedance indicated that certain recycled metal-sulfates from Redwood could offer superior performance.

Redwood Materials operates on a circular supply chain model, focusing on the recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries and electronic waste to reclaim valuable metals like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. After refining recovered materials and producing new battery components, Redwood sells high-quality, recycled materials to battery and EV manufacturers.

In January 2022, CEO JB Straubel said, “We’re not profitable yet because we’re growing so quickly and we’re reinvesting and will be for quite a few years. But the actual operations of recycling these batteries, that is profitable today. There’s really quite a hunger for these materials."

In February 2023, Redwood Materials received a conditional commitment for a $2 billion loan from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office as part of the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program (ATVM).

In January 2023, Redwood began producing anode copper foil at its Northern Nevada facility, completing Phase One of its copper foil plan, and by late 2023 they were expected to begin cathode qualification.

According to Fast Company in March 2024, Redwood recycled about 10 GWh worth of lithium-ion batteries in 2023, good for roughly 44,000 tons of material, and enough to create batteries for about 100,000 cars.

The company’s goal is to recycle and produce 100 GWh of battery materials every year by 2025, enough to power one million EVs. The longer-term goal is to reach 500 GWh annually by 2030 to assist the development of five million EVs.

“Next year [2024] is kind of the first major wave of EVs coming off the road, due to the early ramp of EVs in the 2012 to 2014 time range. That’s across full EVs but we also see a significant number of hybrids, primarily Prius, and plug-ins,” Cal Lankton, Redwood’s chief commercial officer, told Forbes. “Every year there are more and more EVs on the road so you can project, using analytics about battery degradation over time and how the general car fleet turns over, an assessment around how many cars are going to come off the road in a given timeframe.”

In September 2023, Redwood Materials announced its expansion plans in Europe to support its mission of creating a closed-loop battery supply chain. Localizing the global battery supply chain across the US and Europe will be critical to driving down the costs and increasing the sustainability of electric vehicles and clean energy storage. Europe continues to be the fastest-growing EV market globally, driven by automakers’ commitments and strong government support to electrify. To support this demand and to further expand Redwood’s operations and commitment to the European market, Redwood acquired Redux Recycling GmbH, the EU’s leading lithium-ion battery recycler.

In November 2023, Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) and Redwood Materials announced an expanded recycling agreement that aims to create pathways for automotive batteries used in Toyota's electrified vehicles that have reached the end of their life. Toyota has agreed to source Redwood’s cathode active materials and anode copper foil as part of its production in Toyota’s upcoming North Carolina battery manufacturing plant. Redwood believes this represents the first time that an automaker is both recycling end-of-life hybrid electric vehicle batteries, like those used in the Toyota Prius, and then returning those same recycled metals into that same automaker’s batteries for use in future electrified and all-electric vehicles.

In November 2023, Redwood Materials announced that the Company is working with Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) to decommission its first-generation storage project at the Anahola substation, a 4.6 MWh battery storage system. KIUC stands apart in its approach to energy. Founded in 2002, they've been pivotal in guiding Hawaii's shift to renewables, often achieving 100% renewable power generation on sunlit days. Partnering with KIUC demonstrates the shared commitment to a sustainable energy future and they look forward to continuing to drive that vision in energy storage.