Epsilon Carbon, a coal chemical processing company, announced that it plans to invest $70 million (~₹5.2 billion) over the next five years towards establishing 50,000 tons of anode material manufacturing capacity in the country by 2025.

The Mumbai-based company said that it would diversify into the battery material business to develop and manufacture carbon products for the anode components of lithium-ion batteries.

Epsilon said that its battery materials wing would be set up under a new subsidiary – Epsilon Advanced Materials, which has already commissioned production in the country to produce 5,000 tons of anode material annually. The company plans to triple this capacity by 2021 and plans to achieve a production capacity of 50,000 tons per year by 2025. Epsilon Advanced Materials was set up to supply synthetic graphite material to cell manufacturers and energy storage device companies.

The company also stated that it had started trials with anode material producers and cell manufacturers globally to start the qualification phase.

Lithium-ion batteries are some of the most commonly used batteries in electronic devices and electric vehicles. The anode is the electrode of a battery that releases electrons during discharge. Lithium-ion batteries use anodes made out of graphite, a carbon-based material.

In March, United States-based XNRGI announced that the company opened a high-temperature lithium-ion battery factory in Gurugram in India that can produce 240 MWh of battery production capacity. The factory will be spread across 45,000 square feet of land. It said it also has aggressive plans to scale capacity worldwide in the multi GWh range by 2022 with strategic relationships in different parts of the world.

In December 2019, Ather Energy announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Tamil Nadu to set up a two-wheeled electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility. The 400,000 square feet factory will be located at Hosur. The company added that it has plans to expand its products and services to 30 more cities over the next few years.

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