Anaphite wins £1.2m DRIVE35 funding to scale dry coating tech for LFP battery electrodes

Anaphite secures DRIVE35 funding to scale breakthrough dry coating technology for LFP electrode manufacturing

Anaphite has successfully secured £1.2 million of grant funding through the UK Government-backed DRIVE35 Innovation Fund for Project SAVI: Scale-up and Validation of LFP Dry Coating.

Delivered by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade in partnership with the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC) and Innovate UK, the DRIVE35 programme is part of the UK Government’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan, which outlines its commitment to a zero-emission future, with an unprecedented £4 billion of grant funding available to 2035 for automotive R&D, scale-up, and transformation.

The project will accelerate the industrialisation of our proprietary Dry-Coating Precursor (DCP®) technology for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) electrodes, helping deliver lower-cost, lower-carbon and more energy-efficient battery manufacturing.

Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) batteries are the dominant battery chemistry for stationary energy storage and are increasingly being adopted for electric vehicles because of their safety, durability and affordability.

When produced with dry coated manufacturing techniques, the cost savings for LFP electrodes are even greater than for Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) electrodes. But successful dry coating of LFP electrodes is very difficult to achieve. The project centres on Anaphite’s DCP® technology, which has been validated for NMC electrodes, and has been proven effective for dry coating LFP electrodes.

LFP materials typically contain finer particles and higher surface areas than NMC, making them difficult to process using conventional mixing techniques. Poor mixing can lead to inhomogeneity, cracking, weak adhesion and inconsistent battery performance. Anaphite’s proprietary chemical compositing techniques, that make DCP®, overcome these challenges by creating highly uniform composite powders that are optimised for high-speed roll-to-roll dry coating. This produces high-performance LFP electrodes with excellent coating properties.

Project SAVI is a £2.7 million programme to further Anaphite’s LFP DCP® production capability. Our expert teams will scale LFP DCP® from laboratory batches to 25kg, which can then produce 100-metre double-sided LFP electrodes at 25m/minute. This will demonstrate Anaphite’s dry-coating technology at manufacturing- representative scale and deliver A-sample demonstrator electrodes for battery manufacturers. These samples will be used to assess performance, manufacturability and integration into future electric vehicle battery programmes.

Joe Stevenson, Anaphite CEO says:

Anaphite’s DCP® process technology has already demonstrated world-leading capability and benefits when applied to the latest LFP active materials at small scale.

”This project will enable us to develop and demonstrate this capability at larger scale and provide electrode for testing in the types of cells used in vehicles and grid-scale energy storage systems. It is highly accelerative for our development of this important technology.”

Project SAVI will strengthen the UK battery supply chain, support high-value manufacturing jobs, and position the UK at the forefront of next-generation battery production technologies. Successful completion of the project will enable deeper engagement with global cell manufacturers and automotive OEMs.

Of the DRIVE35 Fund, Ian Constance, Chief Executive at the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK, said:

The projects announced today demonstrate the depth of innovation and engineering excellence that exists across the UK automotive sector.

Through DRIVE35, we are supporting businesses to move promising technologies to commercial deployment and manufacturing at scale.This investment is about far more than individual projects. It is about strengthening the UK’s capability to design, develop and build the technologies that will define the vehicles of the future. By bringing together industry, government and academia, DRIVE35 is helping create the conditions for long-term growth, increasing investor confidence and reinforcing the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading destinations for automotive innovation.”

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Anaphite secures DRIVE35 funding to scale breakthrough dry coating technology for LFP electrode manufacturing, source