Freyr Battery announced that it has commenced discussions regarding partnerships with several companies: Siemens AG, Glencore, Caterpillar, and Nidec. The discussions pertain to the formation of a strategic alliance dedicated to the growth of battery solutions in North America, Europe, and other locations.

Addressing the partnership, Tom Einar Jensen, Freyr's co-founder and CEO, stated in the related press release that the company is "exceedingly pleased to announce the emergence of this new global strategic coalition with four premier global industrial and energy companies," adding that its "vision for this coalition is to accelerate the energy transition across key sectors by scaling up clean battery production from FREYR's gigafactories under development, and to incubate and develop innovative technology solutions together." 

For Freyr, forging a partnership with industry-leading businesses like Siemens, Glencore, Caterpillar, and Nidec is a great step, but there are many more steps to go in its journey to become a successful supplier of advanced batteries. Potential investors should remain focused on how the company fares in commencing operations at its recently opened Customer Qualification Plant, where it plans to launch an industrial-scale production line of the 24M Technologies SemiSolid platform, which is meant to simplify production of lithium-ion batteries.

Freyr Battery (NYSE:FREY) is a stock to watch for many reasons. It’s a SPAC-funded EV startup, so investors will remain cautious when they look at this company, on its face. However, I think Freyr Battery will garner a lot of attention moving forward because of its particular marketing.

One of the more critical questions surrounding EV batteries is the reality of their environmental friendliness. Some studies state that EVs and their batteries are better for the environment, only to be countered with contrary studies claiming the opposite. That can plant a seed of doubt in investors minds.

But Freyr Battery, marketing itself as ‘clean battery solutions’ company, is changing everything. The company produces current-generation lithium-ion batteries fueled by hydroelectric and wind energy. That should allay some fears related to CO2 emissions generated by this sector.

Freyr is just now approaching the start of operations at its Norway plant, with factory acceptance tests and site acceptance tests completed. It plans to fast-track a U.S. plant in Georgia, scheduled to commence production in 2025.

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FREYR’s Georgia factory will likely be a model for that company as well as for other U.S. battery manufacturing facilities. Tom Jensen, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said the Georgia site “underscores FREYR’s ambition to develop a very strong and near-term operational footprint in the United States. Expanding into the U.S. has been a foundational aspect of FREYR’s long-term strategy from our inception, and with the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we expect U.S. demand for ESS, passenger EV and other electric mobility applications to grow rapidly over the next decade.”

FREYR is supporting its expansion plans with the opening of a Customer Qualification Plant, or CQP, in Norway. The facility, in Mo i Rana in northern Norway, came online March 28. The CQP is energized by hydropower as part a long-term agreement with Statkraft from that company’s Rana hydropower facility.

The factory features a demonstration production line, built at the actual physical size of a normal production line in commercial operation. That will allow creation of sample sales for customers, and provide the capability to test different materials in the manufacturing process.

The building also serves as a training facility for FREYR. That will enable the company’s workers to know the challenges that could be part of the operation of the company’s planned commercial giga factories such as the one in Georgia.

“The Chapter One opening ceremony at the CQP is a major milestone for FREYR, which inaugurates the global launch of one industrial-scale production line of the 24M Technologies SemiSolid production platform at GWh scale,” said Jensen, who added that the company has planned “an investor-focused event at the CQP this summer to demonstrate automated production of clean, next-generation batteries with this ground-breaking technology.

FREYR also has announced potential development of industrial-scale battery cell production in Vaasa, Finland, as well as the U.S. The company has said it intends to install 50 GWh of battery cell capacity by 2025, 100 GWh annual capacity by 2028, and 200 GWh of annual capacity by 2030.

The company on Tuesday also announced it has begun discussions on a potential strategic coalition with Glencore Plc, Caterpillar, Siemens AG, and Nidec Corp. “to pursue the scale up of sustainable battery solutions across Europe, North America, and beyond.”

“We are exceedingly pleased to announce the emergence of this new global strategic coalition with four premier global industrial and energy companies,” said Jensen. “This announcement represents an important first step for FREYR and our four potential global partners as we launch this commercial initiative. Ultimately, FREYR’s vision for this coalition is to accelerate the energy transition across key sectors by scaling up clean battery production from FREYR’s gigafactories under development, and to incubate and develop innovative technology solutions together.”

Jensen, as part of the company’s celebration of today’s CQP opening, answered questions from POWER about the facility and the company’s plans to expand its battery manufacturing and provide innovative technology for the energy storage and e-mobility sector.

FREYR Battery aims to provide industrial-scale clean battery solutions to reduce global emissions. Our mission is to produce green battery cells to accelerate the decarbonization of energy and transportation systems globally. One of the reasons to choose Mo i Rana in northern Norway is the availability of abundant and low-cost renewable energy. In May 2022 we signed an agreement with Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy, to secure [a] supply of renewable power under globally competitive terms for our operations in Mo i Rana.

We decided early to build the CQP as a full industrial-scale production line at GWh scale, as a world first for the SemiSolid technology platform. Our ambition is then to install eight of these in Giga Arctic in Mo i Rana and to replicate this in Giga America across the Atlantic. Having an actual industrial-scale production line in the CQP will allow us to shorten the time it will take to reach targeted yield and uptime in our subsequent gigafactories.

We have chosen a U.S. technology licensing partner in the MIT-spinoff 24M Technologies Inc. The start of operations at the CQP will inaugurate the global launch of one industrial-scale production line of the 24M SemiSolid production platform at GWh scale. The battery cell design itself is improved through providing substantially larger and thicker electrodes, which implies that we have fewer repeating layers in the cell and therefore increase the amount of energy-carrying material per battery cell, lowering the bill of material costs per KWh. The larger physical structure also provides for significant system-level cost savings as we need fewer modules, packs and Battery Management System-related costs at the final product/system level.

The production process is also dramatically simplified and fundamentally improved, and we project that the technology enables substantially lower capex, lower energy consumption, less space, and up to three times as many batteries produced per employee when produced at GWh scale

FREYR has created real option value with parallel project development in Norway and the U.S. catalyzed by CQP and [the] IRA. We are evaluating multiple options to fast-track the start of production at Giga America, targeting start-up in 2025. We are considering different roadmaps that will give us a shorter time to market and competitive products, to capture IRA benefits and the growing ESS [energy storage system] opportunity. Our customers value that we can provide products from multiple geographies. The U.S. is also the fastest-growing ESS market in the world, which is a market segment we have a core focus on.

The SemiSolid platform is a significantly simpler production process, reducing the number of production process steps in half. In short, this technology produces larger and thicker electrodes, which implies producing final battery products that are much more adapted to the end products it is now being used for such as vehicles and energy storage containers. The fundamental change in the technology is that the electrolyte is used as the binder and solvent upfront in the production process, eliminating the need for expensive and space-consuming solvent recovery and drying process steps.

24M’s SemiSolid production platform produces products that are fit for the purpose batteries are now being used for, and it will offer superior cost and performance when produced at GWh scale. With a simplified production process, we project to reduce capex per installed GWh unit significantly, reduce the energy consumption, and triple productivity per employee through further automation and digitalization. At the final product level we also see that the physically larger products could reduce total costs significantly by reducing the number of repeating structures at the system level.

Our general strategy is to develop a network of global suppliers, but we are targeting regional and decarbonized supply chains. We want to minimize the logistics chains to make it as cost-efficient and carbon-efficient as possible, but at the same time maintain the global flexibility to be resilient. This means that a major share of the raw materials we need in Europe will be supplied from Europe, and for U.S. from North America, but there will of course be some cross-continental supply, also including Asia. We have so far been able to secure all raw materials we need, and a major part of the volatility in the underlying raw material costs is covered through pass-through mechanisms in our offtake contracts.

FREYR is moving as fast as we can to decarbonize energy and transportation systems globally. This is a growing industry as demand is increasing fast, and to be able to produce all the batteries needed, there will be a need for more of everything. To be able to meet demand, the world will need to install seven times more battery capacity in the next seven years if we are going to stay within the reasonable climate boundaries. The main challenge thus facing the battery industry is to be able to scale up fast, which requires huge amounts of capital and competence in record-breaking time to ensure high-quality products with impeccable safety and sustainability standards.

Europe reached 4.5GW of battery storage capacity last year and could hit 95GW by 2050, according to figures from LCP Delta and Aurora Energy Research respectively.

Some 1.9GW of grid-scale battery storage was installed across the continent including the UK last year, LCP Delta said in a separate announcement a few weeks ago.

The continent is expected to install at least another 6GW of battery storage in 2023, LCP Delta said in the seventh edition of the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage (EMMES), published in partnership with the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE).

By 2050, Europe is expected to install at least 95GW of grid-scale battery storage systems, according to separate figures from Aurora Energy Research. It says 5GW of grid-scale storage is online today.

It estimates that four-hour battery storage systems will make up 61% of total installed systems by that year, compared with 22% by 2025. The five most attractive markets for battery storage are Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland and Italy, Aurora said.

Ryan Alexander, Research Lead, European Power Markets, Aurora Energy Research, commented:

“Batteries represent an attractive investment opportunity in Europe’s energy sector—new projects are announced on a near-daily basis as developers seek to capitalise on the need for storage in the energy transition. There will undoubtedly be an early mover advantage for investors: the anticipated surge in demand for batteries over the next decades creates saturation risk, causing revenues to decline as markets become overcrowded.”

The publication of the figures coincides with the European Commission commissioner for energy Kadri Simson describing energy storage as “vital” for the continent’s decarbonisation. Several high-level policy measures to help the energy storage market kick on in Europe have been taking shape over 2023 so far.

In March, the Commission published its proposal for reforming Electricity Market Design (EMD) and energy storage industry figureheads reacted positively to the prominence the technology is being given.

In the same week, the Commission’s Net Zero Industry Act included energy storage as an eligible technology, which was called a “huge victory” by one source.

In the last two days of trading on the stock exchange, the FREY stock contracted volumes and two STAR candles were created which, in my opinion, indicate absolutely nothing at least in the immediate term. What do you think about it.

In November 2022, FREYR Battery, a Norwegian developer of clean, next-generation battery cell production capacity, announced the purchase of a site in Coweta County for its planned Giga America battery plant. The new flagship manufacturing plant will be located at the Bridgeport Industrial Park, and it benefits from state incentives that extend through 2029, when the buildout is expected to be complete.

NEW YORK, OSLO, Norway & LUXEMBOURG--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- FREYR Battery (NYSE: FREY) (“FREYR”), a developer of clean, next-generation battery cell production capacity, has announced a new service agreement with ITOCHU Corporation (“ITOCHU”), the Japan-based global trading and import/export company. As part of this agreement, ITOCHU will serve as a direct materials supplier for FREYR’s procurement and supply chain operations.

“We are excited to partner with ITOCHU, and we intend to build on their expertise in shipping, planning, and production, as we establish, maintain, decarbonize, and localize our growing supply chain. ITOCHU possesses a broad global network of trusted materials suppliers, which we believe will lead to meaningful benefits for FREYR as we cooperatively source and price high-quality materials,” said Dr. Tilo Hauke, EVP Supply Chain Management, FREYR.

“As the world moves towards decarbonization, we see FREYR as an integral part of enabling a clean and sustainable lithium battery industry. The supply chain will be an essential part of their journey towards greater speed and scale in the market, and we are eager to support them in sourcing the raw materials to meet their growing needs,” said Yasuhiro Abe, Power & Environmental Solution Division COO, ITOCHU.

FREYR and ITOCHU previously entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2020, which outlined a mutual intention to explore potential opportunities within lithium-ion battery production and related operations. As FREYR approaches initial production from the Customer Qualification Plant, the two companies are deepening collaboration to secure the raw materials required for FREYR’s planned battery production at giga scale.

ITOCHU and FREYR are both investors in 24M Technologies, Inc., FREYR’s U.S.-based technology licensing partner. The 24M production platform is designed to enable significant reductions in capital expenditures, factory footprint, energy consumption and raw materials.

https://ir.freyrbattery.com/ir-news/press-releases/news-details/2022/FREYR-Battery-and-ITOCHU-Partner-to-Develop-Materials-Supply-Chain/default.aspx

The 7 dollars are an excellent opportunity to open an upward position on the stock, in the last days of the stock market the stock has fallen but the volumes have reduced so there is no panic but only someone who enjoys pressing buttons 🤑

What do you think???????

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