OCTOBER 14, 2024
PRESS RELEASE
Atlas Materials and 6K Energy sign MOU to establish a Strategic Partnership Agreement to support the development of a fully integrated, sustainable North American EV battery supply chain
London – Atlas Materials (“Atlas” or “the Company”) announces the signing of a memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) with 6K Energy (“6K”), a leader in the sustainable production of Li-ion battery materials, to establish a strategic partnership (“the Partnership”) to jointly explore opportunities associated with the processing and refining of battery materials in support of a fully integrated, sustainable North American electric vehicle (“EV”) battery supply chain.
The Atlas Process creates clean, battery grade nickel with a significantly lower environmental footprint than other processes and produces no waste or other emissions while increasing the amount of ore available for batteries by 50%. Until now, saprolite ores, which account for approximately one third of the world’s nickel resources, could not be processed into battery grade applications economically, which is what the Atlas Process is targeting.
6K’s award-winning UniMelt® production system continues to deliver multiple IRA compliant Li-ion materials, including nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) and lithium ferrophosphate (LFP) battery cathode active materials (CAM), with strong specification performance meeting or exceeding industry requirements. The company’s NMC811 single crystal CAM delivers high capacity with excellent rate performance while exceeding EV cycle-life requirements. LFP CAM is achieving over 160mh/gm capacity with exceptional efficiency, trending to >6000 cycles while maintaining 80% capacity while 6K’s single-crystal NMC811 is demonstrating state-of-the-art performance trending to >3000 cycles to 80% state of health. 6K delivers both NMC and LFP at a significantly lower cost than Chinese suppliers – backed by lower energy consumption and as much as 65% lower carbon footprint.
The Partnership will see Atlas and 6K working together to explore the development of a fully integrated mid-stream hydrometallurgical processing refinery in North America. Atlas will continue to focus on the North American production by deploying its low carbon process to produce mixed hydroxide precipitate (“MHP”) from its established access to nickel laterite sources. 6K will focus on converting nickel salts to CAM with its propriety microwave-generated plasma in a closed-loop production process. The joint work will provide the lowest carbon footprint impact in conjunction with a market leading solution for EVs and the automotive industry as a whole.
David Dreisinger, CEO Atlas said:
“Following the successful completion of our pilot plant earlier this year, which produced high quality nickel MHP, we look forward to building a strong partnership with 6K to further our goal of providing a sustainable supply of low carbon MHP for the North American EV battery market.”
Sam Trinch, Group President 6K Energy commented:
“We continue to focus our efforts on delivering multiple IRA complaint chemistries including NMC and LFP from our PlusCAM factory. Having partners like Atlas working through a collaborative framework for the sustainable production of domestic CAM helps us drive substantial economic and technical advantages over competitors.”
Contact
Aura Financial
Michael Oke, Andy Mills
+44 207 321 0000
The Atlas Process
The Atlas Process uses acid and alkali reagents to extract nickel from ore to produce nickel products used in the production of EV batteries and benefits from several significant advantages as it:
- Works at atmospheric pressure
- Works at atmospheric temperature
- Combines existing proven processing technologies
- Is proven on ores from many of the world’s major nickel mines
About 6K
With sustainability at its core, 6K, founded in North Andover, Massachusetts, has developed UniMelt®, a proprietary advanced microwave plasma production system, to transform engineered materials into revolutionary products that advance industries across additive manufacturing, renewable energy, aerospace, consumer electronics, and more. 6K represents 6000 degrees ᵒC, both the temperature of the operation of UniMelt®, the world’s only microwave production scale plasma system, and the temperature of the sun’s surface.
The 6K Energy division is focused on the production of low-cost, sustainable, and domestically produced battery material accelerating the pace of battery production and adoption of electric vehicles. The 6K Additive division specializes in sustainably sourced, additive manufacturing metal powders production and reclamation, using a proprietary milling and cleaning process that ensures contamination-free, high-quality powders.