6K Appoints Three Seasoned Battery Industry Experts to Fuel 6K Energy Division Expansion. Sam Trinch named President of the 6K Energy Division

New Senior Vice President of Business Development & Strategy and New Senior Vice President of Deployment Also Hired to Help Expand Commercial Reach and Production Strategies

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Nov 08, 2021, 10:59 ET

NORTH ANDOVER, Mass., Nov. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 6K, a leader in the production of sustainable advanced materials for energy storage and additive manufacturing powders, today announced the appointment of Sam Trinch as president of 6K Energy, the company's energy storage division. 6K also announced the hiring of Chad McDonald as senior vice president of business development and strategy as well as Thanh Nguyen as senior vice president of deployment for the 6K Energy group. Through its sustainable UniMelt^® microwave production platform, 6K Energy has proven it can significantly drive down battery material costs by 50-70% while producing a range of battery materials including NMC 811 single crystal, silicon anode, LFP, and LLZO to name a few. All three executives will help guide the partnership, commercial and go-to-market strategies helping to further establish 6K Energy as the leading organization for sustainable, low cost, domestic supply of performance battery materials.

"6K Energy has developed strategic relationships with the battery industry's most iconic brands from OEMs, cell manufacturers, battery manufacturers and battery material suppliers who are looking to 6K for high-performance battery materials at significantly lower costs," said 6K CEO Dr. Aaron Bent. "These organizations along with US government agencies have placed a very high importance on domestic battery material production to help solve supply chain and national security issues. The experience Sam, Chad and Thanh bring to 6K Energy allows us to deepen these relationships and enables 6K Energy to better understand domestic production demand requirements. This team will transform this critical information into operational and manufacturing strategies for future 6K Energy production sites designed to help meet the customer demands."

New 6K Energy President Sam Trinch commented, "Dr. Richard Holman, our senior vice president of battery products, was able to take a concept from the additive metals market and develop a truly transformational production platform for battery materials in 36 months. The process significantly drives down costs for our customers while greatly reducing water and energy use and waste creation. For example, a typical automotive program of 100k EVs leveraging 6K Energy's solution can save over $100M of cost and can eliminate CO₂ emissions equivalent to what 15M trees will do in a three-year period. This allows everyone in the ecosystem to be more competitive in the market, while maintaining margins they and their investors expect."

Trinch added, "Joining a team that already had the vision to invest over $30M in a state-of-the-art Battery Center of Excellence, housing a 400MWhr pilot production facility, speaks volumes to the commitment and opportunity for 6K Energy. When you couple the cost savings and sustainability benefits of the UniMelt process over legacy production technologies, our solution will become the go-to battery material production platform. The advantages 6K Energy offers in the market are truly unique and I'm thrilled to lead such an innovative team."

The new members of the 6K Energy executive team background includes:

Mr. Sam Trinch, president 6K Energy

Trinch joins 6K Energy with over 13 years of experience working with global organizations supporting the Li-ion battery space and introducing clean technology into the electric vehicle and energy grid market. Sam comes to 6K Energy from Advano, a developer of silicon anode material for the Li-ion market, as president and chief business officer. Prior to Advano, Trinch served as chief commercial officer and executive vice president of A123 Systems, a subsidiary of the Wanxiang Group, the largest privately held Chinese multinational automotive components manufacturer, and supplier of lithium-ion batteries and energy storage systems. Additionally, Trinch brings over 16 years of experience developing semiconductors and electronic components for the automotive market at Motorola, Philips, NEC Electronics, and Lear Corporation.

Mr. Chad McDonald, senior vice president of business development and strategy

Having spearheaded business development, commercial, business analytics and marketing teams in the electric vehicle, automotive, and mobile device sectors, McDonald will lead the business development and commercial sales efforts for 6K Energy. McDonald joins 6K Energy from Mavel Automotive, a manufacturer of electric vehicle drive trains where he was responsible for business development and strategy. Prior to Mavel, Chad was senior director of marketing, business development and strategy for Tesla (Maxwell Technologies acquired by Tesla in 2019) for nine years. McDonald has held similar roles with leading global suppliers of smart phones, Huawei and Kyocera and was an influential member of Gateway Computer for nearly 12 years where he was responsible for the $1.2B notebook PC product line.

Mr. Thanh Nguyen, senior vice president of deployment

Nguyen has spent the last six years at Farasis Energy where he led the effort to expand operations globally including manufacturing plants in US and Europe. Thanh led the team to win the largest electric vehicles battery program from a German OEM with an expected value in excess of $10B over the eight-year program. Prior to Farasis he held several senior positions at Johnson Controls Power Solutions Division as a senior product manager and technology planning manager for Lithium-Ion group. Early in his career Nguyen spent time in semiconductor and data communications at IBM, Rockwell Semiconductor, and Emerson Electric.

To read the 6K Energy Management biographies in detail, please click here: https://www.6kinc.com/6k-energy/6k-energy-leadership-team/

6K press releases are available here: https://www.6kinc.com/about/news/

About 6K

6K represents 6000 degrees, setting 6K technology apart from all others. It is the temperature of operation of UniMelt^® (5778K to be exact), the world's only microwave production scale plasma, and is also the temperature of the surface of the sun.

6K uses proprietary advanced plasma processing and industrial systems to create materials that are enabling the next-generation of commercial and consumer products. The company's continuous UniMelt process allows for complete and unprecedented control of the entire materials engineering process, to produce materials at exact specifications.

The 6K Additive division is an ISO9001 facility, reclaims and processes over a million pounds of Ti-64 per year, and has recently built and commissioned a state-of-the-art 48,000 square foot production facility for additive manufacturing powders.

To learn more about 6K, please visit www.6Kinc.com

SOURCE 6K