Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) cathode material supplier Advanced Lithium updated the progress of customer certification in 2022 on May 16. Final certification was completed with a total of 5 energy storage and EV battery customers. Among them, the most gains were in the energy storage field, with Advanced Lithium gathering 4 energy storage battery customers for mass production. Future production will not necessarily be carried out by Advanced Lithium in the future but by the customer through Advanced Lithium’s authorized technology transfer.
In total, Advanced Lithium currently has 41 customers in Europe, America, and Asia, with 24 new customers. Terminal applications cover energy storage, electric vehicles, solid-state batteries, etc. Terminal customers and sales markets are located all over the world, and 13 are exploring energy storage and electric vehicles at the same time. In terms of batteries, there are 8 customers specializing in energy storage batteries, 14 customers specializing in electric vehicle batteries, and 6 solid-state battery customers. The number of customers in various fields has increased significantly.
Advanced Lithium stated that global energy storage batteries have been fully verified and will focus on the development of lithium iron phosphate batteries. Most of the shipments before 2025 among Advanced Lithium’s certified customers will be batteries for energy storage and batteries for electric vehicles. Certification for electric vehicle batteries is much longer than that of energy storage batteries. The end customers of Advanced Lithium’s lithium iron phosphate materials are all international car manufacturers. The required certification time and the time to gradually increase production capacity are bound to be longer.
Advanced Lithium pointed out that it is foreseeable that the company’s terminal application market will still be dominated by energy storage batteries before 2028. Despite this, the demand growth of existing customers is still very strong. It is expected that in 2025, customer demand will exceed 170,000 tons per year and will exceed 520,000 tons per year from 2028, a several hundred-fold increase compared with the current annual shipment of only 1,000 tons.
Advanced Lithium explained that the above-mentioned demand will be fulfilled by mass-production performed by customers through Advanced Lithium authorized technology transfer in the future and plans has been in place for a year. The reason for this is that the global lithium-iron battery-related industries are highly concentrated in China, causing general worry among European and American end customers about industry chain risks. This has prompted European and American governments and battery manufacturers to accelerate the establishment of local or international alliance supply chains.
Advanced Lithium added, in the past, the complete in-house manufacturing model was unable to meet the huge demand in the European and American markets. After a year of transformation, the company has actively carried out the authorization and transfer of patented technologies to meet the needs of customers for production capacity. Currently, there are about 10 authorized companies in detailed negotiations and 3 to 5 of them will be established as LFP battery material manufacturers with an annual output of more than 100,000 tons.
Advanced Lithium emphasizes that its asset-light business model based on patent technology authorization and transfer will not only help customers to increase production capacity independently and respond to huge demand, but Advanced Lithium itself can also profit from factory expansion. This model has changed to be led by customer development and continues to profit from a model of technology transfer to collect royalties.
（Image：Advanced Lithium）