Bergen Carbon Solutions and the Japanese corporation have on 29 September 2022, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the aim of establishing a joint venture to become a provider of critical materials to the European battery industry. Due to confidentiality and commercial reasons more details on the MoU and partner will be provided in due course. The solution aims to increase conductivity and reduce resistance in battery anode materials, and as announced previously, promising half-cell tests results have been achieved.

In addition to the work on anodes, the company will investigate cathodes as a market for joint products. The battery industry is growing rapidly in Northern Europe and several investment decisions have been made for huge battery factories as well as for key materials for batteries, for example anode-graphite. Bergen Carbon Solutions aims to become an integrated part of this industry and through the plans set out in the MoU the company is one step closer to realising this.

There is a discrepancy in the supply and demand expected for the battery industry in Europe, where European countries will account for 25% of demand, yet currently only represent 4% of global supply.