General Motors, Panasonic sign investment deals with Canadian graphite producer

GENERAL Motors and Panasonic Holdings have signed agreements to buy electric-vehicle battery materials from Nouveau Monde Graphite and will invest in the Canadian miner to help it produce high-quality graphite in North America.

GM and Panasonic have each committed to purchase 18,000 tonnes of active anode material annually over a period of six to seven years, Nouveau Monde Graphite said in a statement on Thursday (Feb 15).

The mining company has a project in Saint-Michel-des-Saints, Quebec, about 100 miles north of Montreal, and plans to build a graphite concentrator nearby. A refining facility for the production of active anode material, which accounts for about half of an electric vehicle battery, will also be built in Becancour, Quebec, where GM and Ford Motor are already constructing EV battery-component plants.

The cost to build the entire operation is estimated at about US$1.2 billion, and Nouveau Monde Graphite plans to raise US$725 million in debt and US$475 million in equity. GM and Panasonic are each injecting US$25 million into the company now.

The two companies and potential co-investors may participate in future funding worth hundreds of millions of US dollars, according to the statement.

“We needed players ready to commit over a 10-year period, so three years of construction and seven years of supply in large quantities,” Nouveau Monde chief executive officer Eric Desaulniers said in an interview.

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“We will now be able to set up a financial structure, which could not have happened otherwise. It is really the most important milestone for us to continue our progress.”

The firm is also backed by the financial arm of the Quebec government, London-based private equity shop Pallinghurst Resources and Japan’s Mitsui.

Graphite is a key material used to make the anode, the negative electrode of EV batteries, while the cathode is the positive electrode which includes lithium. Almost no battery-grade graphite is produced in North America, and the battery supply chain relies heavily on China, which has at least 90 per cent of the global natural graphite anode capacity, according to BloombergNEF. BLOOMBERG