A battery technology company based in Bristol, Anaphite, has secured £1.4 million in a Series A follow-on round through the Innovate UK Investor Partnership Programme.
Half of the capital comes from Innovate UK’s Clean Energy and Climate Technologies competition, with the other half provided by aligned investment from climate-focused venture capital funds Elbow Beach and World Fund. The investment will support the expansion of Anaphite’s Dry Coating Precursor (DCP)® technology platform beyond NMC cathodes to enable high-throughput dry coating of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathodes and graphite anodes.
LFP cathodes have become increasingly competitive in mainstream electric vehicles in recent years, despite having lower energy density than NMC materials. However, manufacturingLFP cathodes remains more energy-intensive, requiring more than twice the energy per kWh of battery cells produced compared withNMC cathodes using medium-to-high nickel content. Material mixing and electrode coating account for 30–40% of total cell manufacturing energy and cost, making process optimisation a key way to reduce both cost and carbon intensity.
With LFP forecast to account for more than 55% of global cathode demand by 2030, demand for technologies that enable reliable, high-yield dry coating is rising. Yet dry coating LFP cathodes is more challenging than NMC, with no commercial-scale solution proven to date. To meet growing EV demand, as well as regulatory milestones including the 2030 and 2035 bans on new combustion engine vehicles in the UK and EU, scalable manufacturing processes are urgently needed.
Anaphite aims to address these challenges by applying its dry coating expertise and nanomaterials capability to LFP electrode formulations. The company has already demonstrated the performance of its dry coating technology on NMC cathodes. Its DCP® platform uses proprietary chemical compositing techniques to disperse difficult-to-mix materials such as binders and conductive carbons, attaching them to active material particles to create homogenous dry composite powders. This approach is intended to overcome the limitations of existing mixing methods, which have proven inadequate for LFP dry coating.
Anaphite’s CEO, Joe Stevenson, commented: “We’re thrilled to have secured this grant support from Innovate UK and the matching investment from Elbow Beach, World Fund and other Anaphite investors. This enables us to attack one of the toughest technical challenges in dry coating – successfully manufacturing LFP electrodes. Once achieved at scale, it will be enormously valuable to the industry. Anaphite’s DCP® technology has been successful with NMC dry coating formulations, and we’re confident it can be applied to LFP, to further boost the cost and carbon emission savings for OEMs.”
Image source: Anaphite
