Mining giant Rio Tinto buys $10M stake in Canadian EV battery firm Nano One

Mining heavyweight Rio Tinto is buying into Canada’s evolving battery technology industry through a US$10-million investment and partnership deal with Vancouver-based Nano One Materials Corp.

The U.K.-headquartered miner, which has various aluminum, diamond and iron operations in Canada, will acquire a roughly five-per-cent stake in Nano One as part of the agreement. It will also work with the Canadian company on using iron powders from Rio Tinto’s Sorel-Tracy, Que. plant in the production of cathode active material (CAM), a key input in electric vehicle batteries.

The two companies announced the investment and collaboration deal at a Rio Tinto facility in Montreal June 9, alongside Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s minister of natural resources.

“The transition to net-zero is now a competitive race between the world’s economies and enterprises, and I am certainly pleased to say, as evidenced by this project announced today, that Canada is increasingly at the front of the pack,” Wilkinson said at the press conference.

Nano One CEO Dan Blondal said the deal will help support the company’s scale-up, providing it with a partner with deep, high-volume mining experience and a growing battery materials business.

“This brings horsepower and the kind of know-how that can propel us into a terawatt-hour-era of lithium-ion battery materials.”

Quebec is quickly becoming a hotbed for CAM production. In March, both German chemical firm BASF and a joint venture between South Korea’s Posco Chemical and General Motors announced plans to build industrial-scale battery materials plants in Bécancour.

Along with iron powders sourced from Quebec, the new strategic collaboration deal will test a range of Rio Tinto metals products, including lithium, in Nano One’s CAM production process.

The deal with Rio Tinto is the third major development for Nano One in as many weeks. The battery technology firm announced a joint development agreement with BASF May 31, a few days after disclosing its plan to buy Johnson Matthey Battery Materials Canada. That $10.3 million deal includes the British company’s cathode active material plant in Candiac, Que., which has been producing lithium iron phosphate batteries — a type of lithium-ion battery — since 2012.

Once the deal for Johnson Matthey’s Canadian battery operations closes, Blondal said the Quebec facility will serve as a “launchpad” for Nano One’s growth plans. The company has developed new technology to simplify the CAM production process, and ultimately aims to supply product to cell plants building batteries for automotive, among other industries.

Nano One will put Rio Tinto’s investment in the company toward its pending acquisition of the Candiac plant and wider plans to produce CAM on a larger scale.