Nano One Materials Corp. (Vancouver, B.C., Canada) a clean technology company with patented processes for the sustainable production of lithium-ion battery cathode active materials (CAM), and Worley Chemetics, a wholly owned Canadian subsidiary of Worley Limited have entered into a Strategic Alliance Agreement and a License Agreement for the purposes of jointly developing, marketing and licensing a process engineering design package for the deployment of cathode active material (CAM) production facilities with potential customers in the lithium-ion battery materials sector. Through Worley Chemetics, Worley offers technology and solutions for sulfuric acid and other specialty chemicals facilities.
“This licensing agreement and global strategic alliance with Worley is another major milestone for Nano One,” said Nano One CEO, Dan Blondal. “It adds to the growing confidence of our shareholders, partners, and government stakeholders. It amplifies the value of our One-Pot process and addresses a growing need for a new generation of scalable battery cathode material production technology and clean, diversified supply chains. Worley has a global network of clients, deep engineering knowledge and a track record of designing and building process facilities that can accelerate our design-once-build-many growth strategy. We have found in Worley a collaborative, insightful and visionary team that is just as passionate about changing how the world makes battery materials as we are.”
Under the Strategic Alliance Agreement, Nano One and Worley will jointly develop a holistic technology CAM package that incorporates Nano One’s proprietary One-Pot process into a modular process engineering design package with intellectual property rights, flow sheets, detailed engineering, the operational know-how of both parties and applicable proprietary equipment. Worley Chemetics will also design and fabricate One-Pot reactors made with customized metal alloys. The License Agreement oversees the sale of CAM packages, including necessary cross-licensing of intellectual property, license fees and remuneration to both parties over a term of up to 20 years.
The One-Pot enabled CAM package will be marketed, sold and deployed to a wide range of customers in North America, Europe, the Indo-Pacific and other regions globally, enabling them to develop competitive CAM production assets to meet emerging market demand in renewable energy storage and electric vehicle sectors. The CAM package is expected to reduce risk and cost, while accelerating the timeline to project certainty and financial investment decision with easier permitting and broader community acceptance.
Worley’s Chief Executive Officer, Chris Ashton, said, “We’re pleased to work with Nano One to bring the One-Pot process to market, which aligns with our technology solutions strategy of commercializing and scaling technologies that accelerate lower cost, lower carbon solutions.”
Worley brings a global team to the Nano One – Worley alliance, with a commitment to sustainability, and specialization in designing and delivery of battery materials facilities, including first-of-a-kind technology scale-up and deployment. Battery Materials is a key growth area for Worley with AUD 1.5B in new business since July 2021. Nano One has previous announced collaborations with Umicore, Saint-Gobain, CBBM, Johnson Matthey, and BASF.
Nano One brings its patented One-Pot process to the alliance as well as its innovation hub in Burnaby, British Columbia, its LFP CAM demonstration facility in Candiac, Qubec and one of the most experienced LFP teams outside of Asia, having produced and sold LFP CAM for 10-plus years in automotive and energy storage sectors. The One-Pot process makes commercially competitive cathode materials by combining the processes for precursor CAM (pCAM) and CAM, thereby enabling a smaller physical footprint than incumbent processes and up to 60% fewer GHGs for NMC, 50% fewer GHGs for LFP and 80% less process water Equally important, the One-Pot process eliminates wastewater and harmful sodium/ammonium sulphate by-products, a major disposal and permitting challenge in current cathode material production processes. The technology also leverages localized and sustainable sources of raw material inputs to enable a secure and diversified supply chain.