Sodium-ion battery-starting baking soda ceased operations this week and ended the company’s 12-year-old quest to commercialize its technology in the US
The company had $ 25 million orders created for its Michigan factory, but it couldn’t deliver them until it had UL certification, according to Raleighs The News and Observer, reporting the company’s closure because baking soda had planned to bring jobs to the state of North Carolina with its new factory.
However, receiving the UL certification can be a long -lasting process that often spans several months. Sodium investors were about to release more means and left start against a cash crunch.
Natron’s primary shareholder, Sherwood Partners, tried to sell his share, but found no buyers. As a result, it liquidates the company and dismisses everyone except a small number of employees who will supervise the operation of the operation.
The closure is an example of the challenges that come with trying to produce batteries without consistent industrial policies. The road from start -up to gigafactory often takes a decade or more – a journey that lasts longer than most business cycles – and definitely longer than most investorfads.
Sodium is carved through a process called “allocation in favor of creditors,” an alternative to Chapter 7 Bankruptcy that can result in a quick – and quiet – sale of assets that forget the trial that many liquidations follow.
The company had announced a year ago that it would build a much larger, $ 1.4 billion sodium-ion-ion battery factory in North Carolina, which was able to produce gigawatt-hours value of cells a year, creating as many as 1,000 jobs. Sodium had focused on stationary storage and data center customers, markets where the lower energy density of the sodium ion is not so much concerned.
While sodium-ion batteries have the potential to be significantly cheaper than their lithium-ion competitors due to sodium’s abundance, their potential has been undercut by a lithium prize war in China. For the past two and a half years, the price of the lithium carbonate has cratered, according to benchmark mineral information.
Sodium is only the latest accident in a number of recent attempts to produce large amounts of batteries outside Asia.
In June, Oregon-based Powin filed for chapter 11 competition as it could not find a non-Chinese supplier of lithium-iron phosphate cells. The company used the cells to collect lattice batteries.
Earlier this year, Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt also filed bankruptcy in his home country and ended the journey for Europe’s best chance for a homework competitor. The company was allegedly burned through $ 100 million a month as it struggled to master large -scale production. BMW canceled a $ 2 billion contract in June 2024 due to Northvolt’s inability to deliver.
The error string highlights the difficulty of building battery companies outside Asia, which for decades have developed both mature supply chains and businesses with tremendous expertise.
If the United States or Europe is to succeed in creating domestic challengers to the Asian battery giants, it will take sustained government support for a decade or more, not the whip that has defined the last 15 years. Given political realities, joint ventures with companies such as Panasonic, LG Energy Solution and SK -Innovation are more likely to succeed.
In the foreseeable future, the West’s best chance of domestic battery production is still running through Asia.