Electrovaya spikes after acquisition of Germany’s Evonik Litarion

Shares of Electrovaya (Electrovaya Stock Quote, Chart, News: TSX:EFL) are racing today after the company announced it had acquired Evonik Litarion GmbH and licensed intellectual property from Separion.

The company says the deals will give it world class capacity to produce lithium-ion electrodes cleaner and more cheaply than its competitors. The acquisition of Evonik comes with a large patent portfolio and the licensing deal with Separion is for a ceramic composite separator.

“Conventional manufacturing of lithium ion employs a toxic NMP (n-methyl-pyrrolidone) process, which is prohibitively expensive and energy intensive,” said CEO Dr. Sankar Das Gupta. Regulations are becoming more stringent in Japan, Europe and North America. Electrovaya’s unique non-toxic manufacturing technology will enable this best-in-class plant to become one of the lowest-cost producers, as well as the greenest and one of the largest manufacturers globally. We are delighted to be working with an exceptional and experienced team at Litarion.”

Das Gupta described the business advantage he sees deriving from the acquisition.

“We also intend to make the ceramic composite separator available to all producers of lithium-ion batteries and make it an industry standard,” he said. “All lithium-ion applications where safety is important, such as energy storage, electric vehicles, aerospace and utilities, should, in our opinion, utilize this separator, which gives vastly improved safety performance to lithium-ion batteries and cells. Electrovaya’s proprietary green process provides low-cost lithium-ion batteries and this ceramic composite separator affords the highest safety, two critical challenges in the energy storage industry.”

Electrovaya says today’s acquisition will afford it more plant capacity that will allow it to service larger markets with higher margins, including grid-scale energy storage, aerospace, microgrids and marine industries.

At press time, shares of Electrovaya were up 26.9% to $0.66.

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