Redwood Materials raises $700M to expand its battery recycling operation
Summary
Redwood Materials CEO JB Straubel shared his aspirations last year to turn the startup he co-founded in 2017 into one of the worlds major battery recycling companies. Now, the former Tesla co-founder and CTO has the money to accelerate those plans.Redwood Materials said Wednesday it raised $700 million from high-profile institutional investors and venture firms, providing the capital needed to expand its existing operations well beyond its Carson City, Nevada, home base to locations throughout North America and even into Europe.The Series C round was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates and included Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Baillie Gifford, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Fidelity. It then processes these discarded goods, extracting materials like cobalt, nickel and lithium that are typically mined, and supplies those back to its customers, which today includes Panasonic at the Gigafactory in Nevada that it operates with Tesla and Envision AESCs battery plant in Tennessee. Redwood has also partnered with Amazon to recycle EV and other lithium-ion batteries and e-waste from parts of their businesses.In our view, the need for these materials will grow exponentially over time as we enter the era of de-carbonization, Joe Fath, portfolio manager of the T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund, said in a statement, adding that Redwood is well-positioned to be at the forefront of tackling this emerging and critically important problem.Straubel sees a bottleneck coming as the whole supply chain seeks to access critical materials. The new 400,000-square-foot addition onto the recycling facility is expected to be operational by the end of the year.To support the growth, Redwood started hiring more employees, with plans to add more than 500 jobs over the next two years.