Bechtel awarded FEED contract for Mitra Chem's commercial cathode manufacturing plant

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Oct 17, 2022, 11:26 ET

Plant to begin commercial production by 2025

RESTON, Va., Oct. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bechtel was awarded the front-end engineering design (FEED) for Mitra Chem's commercial cathode manufacturing facility. The new facility will produce Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) cathodes on commercial scale by 2025, enabling broad use of iron-based batteries in EVs and energy storage capacity produced in the United States.

As part of the first phase of the LFP manufacturing plant project, Bechtel will adopt Mitra Chem's cathode making process to design the manufacturing facility and perform planning for the commercial facility. Bechtel will leverage its extensive global supply chain to support Mitra Chem's procurement strategy for facility construction.

"Bechtel is proud to partner with Mitra Chem to bring innovative solutions to the U.S. battery supply chain," said Justin Britt, general manager of Bechtel's electric vehicle business. "Bechtel's proven processes and innovations will ensure Mitra Chem continues accelerating its time-to-market timeline to deliver batteries critical to the expansion of EVs and electric storage capacity in the United States."

"We are aggressively advancing our mission to lead the innovation driving and commercialization of iron-based cathode materials to enable mass-market electrification for electric vehicles, energy storage solutions and beyond. Leveraging our proprietary machine learning algorithms, we are able to dramatically accelerate the lab to market timeline," said Vivas Kumar, CEO of Mitra Chem. "Working with top-tier partners like Bechtel enables us to continue to rapidly scale our operations, deliver for our current and future customers and prepare for mass-market manufacturing and deployment."

In September 2022, Mitra Chem announced that it had begun shipments of its commercial-grade LFP materials to a tier 1 global battery cell manufacturer for customer approval and qualification. The passage of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act has supercharged demand for U.S.-made battery materials by offering consumer tax credits tied to domestically manufactured material usage. The company has additional requests for samples to cover the next seven months including nearly every global Tier 1 battery cell maker and multiple household name automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

About Bechtel

Bechtel is a trusted engineering, construction and project management partner to industry and government. Differentiated by the quality of our people and our relentless drive to deliver the most successful outcomes, we align our capabilities to our customers' objectives to create a lasting positive impact. Since 1898, we have helped customers complete more than 25,000 projects in 160 countries on all seven continents that have created jobs, grown economies, improved the resiliency of the world's infrastructure, increased access to energy, resources, and vital services, and made the world a safer, cleaner place.

Bechtel serves the Energy; Infrastructure; Manufacturing & Technology; Mining & Metals; and Nuclear, Security & Environmental markets. Our services span from initial planning and investment, through start-up and operations. www.bechtel.com

About Mitra Chem

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Mitra Chem is building the first North American lithium-ion battery materials product company that shortens the lab-to-production timeline by over 90%. Lithium-ion batteries are the key platform technology enabling electrification in transportation, consumer electronics, along with residential, commercial, and grid-scale energy storage. Mitra Chem's first core product category is iron-based cathodes for Western battery applications. Mitra Chem takes cathode products from lab to industrial scale faster than the competition by leveraging an in-house machine learning technology advantage to dramatically shorten the R&D timeline. Mitra Chem's goal is to transform the cathode from a specialty chemical to a platform technology that differentiates cell performance by end application.

Media contacts:

Bechtel
Iva Zagar
T : +1-713-235-2088
C : +1-240-344-1173
Email: [email protected]

Mitra Chem
Josh Vlasto
C: +1-917-881-9662
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Bechtel