Redwood starts critical materials recovery in South Carolina
Redwood Materials has started critical materials recovery at its 600-acre campus in Berkeley County, South Carolina. The company said the site marks the beginning of operations that will add an initial 20,000 metric tonnes of annual materials production. “This is a small but significant start toward what will become one of the world’s largest recovery, refining, and manufacturing campuses,” Redwood stated.
The so-called “Battery Materials Campus” was first announced in 2022. At the time, Redwood Materials said it would invest 3.5 million dollars to recycle anode and cathode components and process them into new battery materials there. Specifically, the new campus in South Carolina was expected to produce 100 GWh of cathode and anode components per year, with the potential to expand to several hundred GWh per year.
In its current press release, Redwood Materials does not repeat any of that data. It focuses on the significance for the US economy and security instead.
“America runs on critical materials: cobalt, lithium, nickel, and copper,” Redwood said. “They are the backbone of our modern economy, powering everything from computers and smartphones to energy storage, defence systems, and AI data centres.” The company said its goal is to ensure that these materials “are recovered, refined, and redeployed for America’s advantage.”
According to the company, it currently processes about 90 per cent of all lithium-ion batteries recycled in North America. Its Nevada campus produced more than 60,000 tonnes of materials last year. Redwood said it is now on par with the largest US source of nickel and is the only domestic source of cobalt at scale. The company added that its operations represent “one of the most significant, and only new, domestic sources of lithium and copper to come online in decades.”
Redwood cited an estimated 2.25 million tonnes of critical materials contained within the existing US fleet of five million electric vehicles. These resources, it said, can be reused first in stationary energy storage and later recovered through recycling.
“This isn’t just an economic issue; it’s a matter of national security,” the company stated. “The same critical minerals that power batteries also underpin the technologies that keep the nation running and secure.” Redwood said nickel and cobalt are essential for aerospace and defence alloys, while copper supports industrial wiring, power transmission, and semiconductor manufacturing.
Redwood plans to expand production capacity in South Carolina over the next decade and expects to create more than 1,500 jobs.
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