Welcome to the NOVONIX business update. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dr. Chris Burns, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome everybody to NOVONIX 's business update webcast, and thanks for tuning in today. We had several exciting announcements in September, and in fact, we've had a very exciting year of progress across our entire company. I want to take the opportunity to provide a full update to our investors. So in today's presentation, we'll provide an overview of all of the operating parts of our business, as well as the battery sector as a whole and what we're working to do. The presentation will last about 45 minutes, and then we'll go through some questions and answers from the investors in the audience that have been received. The next slide here shows our notice and disclaimers for our forward-looking statements, so please review it at your time after the presentation. To start, I want to introduce NOVONIX .
Our goal is to provide a revolutionary solution to the battery industry. For those less familiar with the story, I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Chris Burns. I'm the CEO of the company. My background is a PhD in physics, and I started in the battery sector about 15 years ago, working under Dr. Jeff Dahn at Dalhousie University. We were very focused on long battery cycle life and extending the performance of these long-life, high-performance batteries for vehicles and energy storage. Ten years ago, we started NOVONIX with the goal of providing equipment, technologies, and services to the industry. I spent time growing that business, which has now become our Battery Technology Solutions group, that we'll talk about through the presentation.
Also during that time, I spent two years working for Tesla, where I really spent time across the battery materials landscape with a focus on graphite and the graphite supply chain for what needed to be the emerging market here in North America as batteries globalized from being a China and Asia-dominated industry. That really led to leaving NOVONIX in 2017 and starting our anode materials business, which we'll spend a significant amount of time talking about. We've spent the last six years developing key technology to make battery-grade synthetic graphite, from concept to development, to pilot line, and now to mass production in our Riverside facility that you see here on the slide. We've gotten strategic investment from folks like Phillips 66 and LG Energy Solution.
We've signed a supply agreement with KORE Power for their factory that they're building in Arizona, and received government support, such as the Infrastructure Law grant that we were selected for last year. So we've made huge progress in this part of the business, and we'll talk about all of that through today's presentation. But also, our Battery Technology Solutions group continues to work on new activities that are going to position our company for our current growth phase, as well as future growth in the battery sector. So we're very focused on being a battery materials and technology company with lower carbon footprint technologies. It's so important as we scale technology here in North America to be focused on our environmental footprint and scalability here in the Western world. We're being driven by the large growing demand for battery materials to support localization, primarily in the EV sector.
Over the past six years, we've developed a significant intellectual property portfolio around our synthetic graphite process technology, which we'll talk about, and also now all-dry, zero-waste NMC cathode synthesis technology that we've brought to the pilot scale within our technology solutions group, and we'll go through that as well. All while our Battery Technology Solutions group continues to provide us competitive advantage to accelerate our pace of R&D and stay very current in terms of the new technologies that are emerging in the batteries sector. In today's world and the drive from the government, which we'll speak about, you know, customers and government financing are really paving a way to a path for profitability in our sector, which is huge as we try to build a new industry here for the battery material supply chain in North America.
So here we'll look at the operating parts of our business. We have three core areas of focus: our Battery Technology Solutions group, our Anode Materials division, and our Cathode Materials team. Within our Battery Technology Solutions group, we develop long-life battery testing equipment and also provide services across the industry, where we have pilot lines to offer a range of services on material characterization, characterization, as well as cell development and testing. We'll talk about all of that as we look at that team. Our Anode Materials division is our largest area of focus now. We consider ourselves a leader in the domestic supply of battery-grade synthetic graphite. We've established partnerships upstream and downstream in terms of raw material suppliers such as Phillips 66 and customers such as KORE Power and LG Energy Solution.
As we look at building out our first mass production site, Riverside, and also for future growth through this decade. The newest part of our business is our cathode technology. We've developed an all-dry, zero-waste cathode synthesis process that we started filing patent applications around in 2020. This was a process focused on minimizing the environmental impact of making high-nickel cathode materials by simplifying the process. We've now brought that technology to a nameplate 10-ton-per-year pilot line and released results of a recent engineering study from Hatch, which we'll talk about as we look at that section. One of the reasons we're here is the drive to electrification of the auto sector. This slide really shows the significant growth in planned North American or U.S. auto manufacturing and the cell suppliers who are coming to support that electrification.
By the end of this decade, we expect to see significant growth in the domestic capacity and then that need for the localization of their supply chain as well, with some of the industry leaders and forecasted cell manufacturing capacity being folks like Tesla and LG Energy Solution, as well as others. So let's look at our Battery Technology Solutions group.... Within our Battery Technology Solutions group, it keeps us at the forefront of battery technology. We have three primary areas that we focus: our Ultra-High Precision Coulometry hardware and testing equipment, which is what we founded the business around 10 years ago. This is focused on how we can enable faster measurements of the longevity and performance of batteries with different chemistries. We have our R&D services team. This spans everything from materials characterization to cell development and prototyping.
As I mentioned, we have pouch and cylindrical cell lines in-house to build cells for our needs as well as for our customers. Then significant cell testing, both using our Ultra-High Precision Charger Systems, as well as other cyclers to do characterization of different cells and different performance properties. This has really enabled a new area of focus in terms of data solutions. We have developed significant amounts of data around linking our materials to cell development and battery performance, and now we're looking to leverage that data into further accelerating our development and linking material science through to battery performance and intelligence. We announced the partnership with Sandbox to look at how to apply AI and quantum analysis into linking those material science and battery performance data.
All of our goals are to be able to move faster in our research, research and development as we develop new materials and technologies for the battery industry. This team has grown significantly over the past 10 years. We have almost 90 employees or over 90 employees now within our technology solutions group, with over 180 hours of battery technology experience. Significant members and contributors to our team include Dr. Jeff Dahn, who joined as our Chief Scientific Advisor about 2 years ago, and also Dr. Mark Obrovac, another professor at Dalhousie University, who we've been sponsoring research for about 5 years, including where the development of our all-dry, zero-waste cathode synthesis came from.
We have a significant base of PhDs, Masters, professional engineers, and highly qualified folks that have come from other sectors and other companies across our industry to work with our team here at NOVONIX. We really use this not just to support our customers in the industry, but as an incubator to continue to develop and invest in new technology, whether it's through partnerships with the university or internally within our team. The next slide shows a cross-section of the industry and how we think about the role that, especially our Battery Technology Solutions group, plays across the value chain. Everyone from upstream in the mining and raw material processing through to cell manufacturers, EV producers, and even recycling companies, are having to face challenges in building new technology in the industry and looking for partners and support in developing, proving, and commercializing their technology.
Our Battery Technology Solutions group works across this entire sector, and it's a huge differentiator when we think about traditional materials companies and their approach to developing products for this sector. This allows us visibility not just into new process technologies upstream, but also the dynamic and ever-changing needs of the EV industry and the customers at which we'll eventually work with for our key areas of focus in terms of our materials business, both our cathode and anode materials technologies. On the next slide is summarizing that partnership I mentioned with Sandbox. We look at how we can continue to improve on what we do in our Technology Solutions group and leverage the huge amount of data that we've developed over the past five years of running this business and doing our material science, linking it to battery data.
Sandbox is an Alphabet spin-out, focused on artificial intelligence and quantum analysis in order to tackle challenging material science problems. They've, of course, identified the battery sector as a unique opportunity to apply these technologies into leveraging the speed at which we can develop new technologies. Our partnership is not just going to lead to a new SaaS product that we'll offer to our customers in the industry, but also helps to optimize what we do in terms of material development for our Anode Materials team, our Cathode Materials team, and future things that we will look to bring to the market. Now, let's look at a deep dive into our Anode Materials division.
We're focused on localizing the synthetic graphite supply chain, and when we think about our progress and the advantages that we have in this space, we're looking at the need for domestic supply, and we'll talk about how significant that is as we look at the localization of tier one battery manufacturers to support the auto sector electrification that we spoke about previously. We've always had a focus on high-performance products. This harkens back to founding NOVONIX around long-life battery technologies, and how can we develop technologies that are going to be cleaner as we produce them and also meet these, evolving performance specifications for important high-performance aspects such as long life, high charge rates, and high energy density. Of course, cleaner and more efficient process technology is critical, especially as we look at growing the battery supply chain outside of Asia and into the Western world.
We had to take an intentional focus to develop technologies that would be cleaner and more scalable here in the Western world, and we'll talk specifically about some differentiation there. And I've already mentioned some of the strategic partnerships we've had earlier, but it's huge progress that we've made in establishing our position as a leader in this space. And to highlight some of those on the right, this includes, most recently, an investment and joint development agreement with LG Energy Solution. Our supply agreement with KORE Power, who will be one of our first customers out of our Riverside facility. MOUs that we previously signed with Panasonic Energy and Samsung SDI.
Phillips 66 being our largest shareholder, making a $150 million investment about two years ago, and our technology development partner, Harper, in terms of developing our furnace technology, first in the world, continuous induction-based furnace systems. We'll speak about those and the key differentiation and the milestones we've had in developing those, those products to date. The next slide looks at the local material shortfalls. As we look at quickly evolving this electrification revolution and our transition to EVs, the challenge is that our supply chain exists almost exclusively in Asia today. So when you look at the global supply chain, you can see that on the left-hand side, both 2025 and 2030, the graphite supply chain is going to be dominated by the existing supply in Asia. And in 2025, that's almost exclusively Asian.
So when you look specifically at the North American market, and the European market, of course, is important here to consider as well, you can see that the planned demand, based on the announcements of cell manufacturing plants and plans from the auto sector, far outstrips the planned supply from ourselves and other people, both in natural or synthetic graphite with plants here in North America. And what this means is that we will have local shortfalls, and that customers in North America or Europe will continue to be reliant on the existing Asian supply chain. And of course, what's changed so much recently is the push for localization that's been rooted in government policies. And we'll talk specifically about how those policies are working and the importance that they're having in order to build out our local supply chain here in North America.
The other important thing to recognize here is that these times are going to approach quickly, right? 2025, with almost 500,000 tons per year of demand, is right around the corner, especially when you look at the timelines of build plants in North America. And so our position to have Riverside starting production at the end of next year is highly unique in order—in our sector, in order to be actually reaching mass production scale and starting to provide product to our early customers, as early as late next year. With a focus on the supply chain, we want to compare what we're looking to do here in North America and what exists today in Asia. Especially as we look at this both from business continuity, risk, and an environmental impact, the existing supply chain for making synthetic graphite in China is highly complex.
Much of the input material is imported into China, this being petroleum coke, and we'll talk about this in the processing steps and details. But it could come from Phillips 66's Humber, U.K. location, for example. It's transported to China. It's transported throughout China for different processing steps, including graphitization in Inner Mongolia, and we'll talk about that process step and the challenges with that. Before then, it would be transported to the U.S. to support the North American market. And all this leads to a supply chain that can be almost 25,000 miles of transport for these materials. And by contrast, we're looking at a fully North American supply chain. Of course, with Phillips 66 as our largest shareholder and hopefully our supplier of materials to our facility, they have production of premium needle coke in their Lake Charles facility.
We operate in Chattanooga, Tennessee, today, and of course, the Southeast Corridor has done so well to attract investment across the tier one sector for cell manufacturers and auto OEMs. So illustrated here as an example, would be the potential delivery of material from our facility in Chattanooga to one of LGES's announced plants, locally. And this has less than 1,000 miles of total transport. So this becomes important for all the reasons I mentioned: cost, environmental impact, as well as business risk and continuity, because companies recognize the need to have diversified and localized supply, especially after suffering through challenges with chip shortages over the past two years.
When we think about our process technology and continuing on the environmental impact, transportation is important, as we just spoke about, but we have to think across our process in terms of how we can have the most environmentally friendly technology and materials. When we look at this, we look at three primary areas. We look at our inputs, we look at our process technology, and we look at our outputs. So, of course, inputs for us are power, so we're focused on working with power jurisdictions that we can access low-cost renewable power, and also the input materials that we take into our plant. We focus on high purity grades of petroleum coke and other products that are going to lead to cleaner processing. Then our process technology is critical, and this is where IP lies.
Most significantly in the process technology, and we'll speak about this in a minute, is the graphitization itself. It represents one of the most complex and expensive processes in the stage from going from petroleum coke to these battery-grade materials. And we'll speak about the benefits of our technology in terms of increased energy efficiency and no chemical purification, both of which are issues in today's world for synthetic graphite or natural graphite made in Asia. And then on the output side, we're focused on negligible facility emissions. And again, we'll talk about our closed-loop furnace technology and how this is such a benefit, especially when scaling in North America.
As well as how we can drive longer-life batteries, because the ability to have batteries in use longer inherently decreases the environmental impact and need for future materials, and as well, benefits from a cost standpoint when we think about the total cost of ownership of these batteries... We take a lot of pride in our focus here on environmental stewardship. We did a life cycle assessment that was conducted by Minviro, that demonstrated one of our grades in material, GX-23, showed a 60% reduction in global warming potential relative to synthetic graphite produced in China, and about a 30% decrease in global warming potential compared to natural graphite produced in China. So we take a lot of pride in our ability to offer customers not just the high performance and local materials that they're looking for, but with clean process technology.
When we look more broadly at our process technology, we have to think about all of the process steps, going from Petroleum Coke to these final battery-ready materials, and the impact and technology that we have in all of those. As I mentioned, Graphitization is one of the most important, and where we have significant IP, and we have partnerships with Harper International around developing the furnace systems that we'll speak about in a moment. But we have to also work with our industry collaborators. For example, our joint development agreement with LG Energy Solution is to optimize these different processing steps to make a targeted product that meets their requirements.
We've worked with Phillips 66 and signed a technology development agreement to also be working upstream in our feedstock materials and how we can have cleaner, more abundant access to raw materials that we can bring into our process. And so when we make these high-grade battery synthetic graphites, we start with petroleum coke, and then we typically change that coke's size, its shape, its particle structure, through steps that you see here, such as crushing, micronization, and agglomeration. And we prepare it to be graphitized, where we heat it to ultra-high temperatures, around 3,000 degrees, to change the atomic structure to perfectly layered carbon over graphite. And then optionally, we can also surface coat those particles before they're finished and ready to ship for a product.
It's important to recognize that all of these steps are critical in making the tier one grades of material that the EV and ESS industry need today. On the next slide here, we're going to look specifically at the graphitization process. This is where we've invested significantly, and six years ago, we set out on a mission to develop cleaner process technology from what is done in China today. So the historical process for making battery-grade synthetic graphite leverages Acheson furnaces, which are a resistive-based furnace where coke is loaded into the furnace, heated to these very high temperatures in a very energy-inefficient manner, and then unloaded. We'll look at that in a moment. There are different options for graphitization in terms of Acheson, lengthwise graphitization, or induction.
You can see here how we look at the pros and cons of these different technologies, where Acheson furnaces are scaled today and can make the products that people are looking for, but they have long processing times, high usage of energy. In today's world, in the Chinese market, there's negligible emission controls and therefore huge emissions from these facilities. Lengthwise graphitization shows some improvements over Acheson, but it's typically used to make blocks instead of powder, material. These blocks are used to machine parts for other sectors in the graphite industry, and therefore, it's not optimized for what the tier ones want for battery-grade graphite today. Induction furnaces offer benefits in processing time, in energy efficiency, in the environmental controls, but their historical challenge has been scale and throughput.
This is what we set to change when we established our Anode Materials division in 2017, especially our partnership with Harper. Now we've made our continuous induction-based systems. To our knowledge, these systems are the first in the world, powder-in, powder-out, closed-loop induction systems that are operating at these ultra-high temperatures. We have all of the benefits of our induction furnace technology in terms of energy efficiency, processing time, being closed loop for environmental controls. But now, over the course of this year, we've been hitting our milestones in terms of product quality, where earlier this year, we announced that we were producing products from these furnaces that were meeting all of their specifications.
Now scalability, where in last month's release, we announced that we were also hitting all of our engineering targets for our continuous systems in terms of their throughput, energy consumption, and emissions. So on the next slide are some images just to give perspective on the differentiation of this technology. On the left-hand side is a photo from a traditional Acheson facility in China, where crucibles filled with powder are loaded into the furnace and then packed and heated to these ultra-high temperatures without environmental controls. On the right-hand side, you see a photo from inside our Riverside facility of two of our Generation 3 furnace systems that we've been running for the past 18 months. So these systems, again, offer significant benefits in terms of their energy efficiency. The metric that we consider is kilowatt-hours per kilogram.
How much energy do we require to convert a kilogram of coke to a kilogram of graphite? And also, the significant benefits in the lack of emissions from the facility. These are closed loop, where we recycle all the process gases straight back into our material stream. And therefore, this is a breakthrough in terms of the ability to graphitize materials in an environmentally friendly way that's scalable here in North America. So we've spent a fair bit of time talking about process, and, and this is critical and a huge differentiation, but equally important is looking at performance. One of the early reasons that NOVONIX gained attention from folks like Samsung and Panasonic, who we signed MOUs with, is because of the product quality that we were making.
This slide here shows battery performance data with different graphite materials, with batteries made in our Battery Technology Solutions division, and a Tesla Model S cell before there was silicon in the anode, simply as a reference for high-performance cells under these conditions. On the bottom chart, you see the capacity retention of identical batteries, where all we change is a leading natural graphite from Asia to a synthetic graphite from Asia, to one of our grades of synthetic graphite from NOVONIX Anode Materials. We can see significant benefits in the cycling performance from natural to synthetic, and even further benefits when transitioning from leading synthetic graphite materials to our material.
To go back to our technology solutions group and some of the benefits that this team offers, the top chart shows our Ultra-High Precision Coulometry testing data of these same types of cells, where we measure the battery performance or the coulombic efficiency in the very early cycles with extreme accuracy. The higher this efficiency is in terms of the charge in and the charge out of the battery, the longer the cycle life should be, because the lower the rate of degradation is. So therefore, you see after only 20 or 25 cycles, we can see that natural graphite is the lowest performance, then the synthetic graphite, and then the NOVONIX synthetic graphite. So in such a short period of time, we can infer the results of traditional cycle testing, where on the bottom chart is many, many months of testing.
So again, cycle life has always been a critical focus of ours, but it's not the only important metric that we have to consider when we look at customer specifications. So the next slide here looks at what we consider our product advantages. We've become very intentional about developing products based on our customer specifications, and I think that's evidenced by our agreement with LG Energy Solution and the joint development agreement to make a targeted product for their requirements. So we have to balance all of the different performance attributes that people are looking for, for their different applications, such as long cycle life, high charge rate, high energy density, and how we can cater our materials to meet those customer needs.
So here we just have images, scanning electron microscope images of different products that we make and general products that we consider in the ESS category, a long-life EV material or a higher charge rate EV material. You can see that there are trade-offs between any of these given materials. But because we've developed process IP across the entire spectrum of process technology that we showed on the previous slide, not just graphitization, we have the ability to tune the performance of these products to meet our customer needs. On the next slide is a sampling of data, just to show performance of one of our grades of what we consider long-life EV materials, compared to different commercial materials in the same class from Asia.
On the left-hand side, we're looking at the cycling performance, similar to what we saw 2 slides ago, where we're always focused on having our materials outperform in these types of cycling conditions, other materials from Asia. But equally important to that, especially for the electric vehicle class, is charge rate. You both have to be able to recharge the batteries quickly, and you need to be able to discharge the batteries quickly for their applications. And so what we show here are charge rate maps and discharge rate curves that really show that our materials perform exactly in line or as well or better than some of these materials from Asia.
Again, this is so critical in being able to offer the right products for the right customers, because we will have a select market here in North America, with several leading OEMs representing the huge majority of capacity that will be built here in terms of batteries by the end of this decade. Therefore, you have to be able to develop and provide products to these customers that meet their requirements, not just at the lab and the pilot line scale, but also at mass production, which is where we are today. The next slide is really focused on that demonstration of mass production technology. This is data that we released last month around one of our furnace production campaigns from our Generation 3 furnace systems at Riverside.
We've been optimizing the performance of these systems over the past 18 months, and I mentioned earlier that earlier this year, we announced that we had met our GX-23 specification target being produced out of these furnaces. To give an understanding of what that looks like, here's a sampling of performance data showing the degree of graphitization. The way to think about this is that the material has gone through this graphitization step and come out in the right target physical state in terms of its performance and structure. So what we can see here is about 130 hours of continuous runtime data in our powder-in, powder-out induction systems. That is showing that we're meeting our target degree of graphitization.
We've done this now while hitting all of our engineering targets in terms of running these machines at their target throughput, at their target energy consumption, all while understanding how to control and have a near-zero emission process. So from our view, this is first-in-the-world technology and a breakthrough in the ability to graphitize materials in the most environmentally friendly way now at mass production scale. What this is unlocking is our path to production at Riverside. We purchased our Riverside facility in 2021. We celebrated an opening of that facility with the Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, and we've retrofitted that facility in terms of the needs for the infrastructure for what we would be installing into that site to be making synthetic graphite.
We signed our first supply agreement with KORE Power, targeting both beginning deliveries late next year for their KOREPlex facility, and we'll speak in detail about that. But starting at about a 3,000 ton per year rate and scaling with their need to about 12,000 tons per year. And in this most recent announcement, now having demonstrated the successful production of our Generation 3 furnace systems and hitting all of our design targets, including throughput, cost, and sustainability, and emissions targets, we're looking at the ability to upsize the production target for Riverside from initially a 10,000 ton per year site to up to a 20,000 ton per year site.
So this is a huge benefit for the company in terms of near-term impact and expanding our growth opportunity, leveraging assets that we already own before we embark on new construction projects to expand capacity. So the biggest milestone coming for this will be in the first quarter of next year, when we complete our engineering package and optimize around the products that we plan to make from this facility, now with the latest results from our process technology and primarily from our graphitization technology. The other thing this has enabled is really our clear path to profitability here in the United States and even from our Riverside facility. So when we look at this chart, we released guidance on the unit economics of our process, trying to highlight sales targets, our operating costs, as well as the significant impact of government programs, and we'll speak about those.
So to start with the sales targets, we're looking at sale prices in the range of $7-$10 per kilogram. And this is not a range based on a potential product that we'll make. This is because we will make different products that have different target sale prices, and it represents a selection of different products with specific sales targets based on the complexity of those products, and the specification requirements of those customers. And now, with solidifying our production with our Gen 3 systems, we're looking at operating costs for these products between $6-$8 per kilogram.
And again, that operating cost is not a range for a given product, but rather the higher complexity and higher performance products will be on the high end of that curve, and therefore on the higher end of the sale price, and the lower cost products will be on the low end of that curve and the low end of the sale price. And so all of this is leading to the ability to have clear path toward operating income out of this site, that gets further benefited by U.S. programs such as the 45X tax credit. The 45X tax credit offers 10% of the cost of production back to qualified producers, which we expect to be.
And now this allows us to really see our operating margins in the 23%-28% range, depending on the product mix and finalized operating costs and sale prices at these targets. So this is now a clear path to generating strong margins and strong returns for not just our Riverside facility, but also all future sites that we'll build, where we have the opportunity to further improve our operating cost structure through scale and process efficiencies. There are other potential benefits that we're not factoring in here to our unit economics, and most notably is the Section 301 tariffs.
We'll speak about that on the next slide, but it's, we are focused on the government programs that can help leverage both pricing advantages for local suppliers, such as the tax credits and Section 301 tariffs, as well as government support, which can help lower our operating costs, such as our access to capital support through things like the infrastructure law grant that we were selected for and the Loan Programs Office financing support. So when we think about the role that the U.S. is playing in localizing the supply chain for battery materials, it's having a direct impact to support our business plan. I just mentioned the Section 301 tariff. This is a 25% tariff on battery-grade graphite that's being imported from China.
There's currently a waiver on this, but when that waiver is removed, it could have a significant impact on the equivalent landed price of battery-grade graphite in the U.S., and therefore the potential premiums that should be paid to local suppliers for material that does not have this tariff enacted on it. Of course, the Inflation Reduction Act has been a huge topic here in North America in terms of how it will incentivize localization of production. We spoke about the 45X tax credits a moment ago. That's 10% of our cost of production back for eligible materials. But there's also significant benefits that eventually manifest in the EV customers in terms of what are referred to as the 30D tax credits.
Within the 30D tax credits, there's $7,500 available based on the localization of your critical minerals that go into the battery and where the battery components are manufactured. So the critical minerals requirement includes graphite, and therefore, they want us to be eligible for these grants, you must source that material from in the U.S. or free trade countries. Most notably, if you source these critical minerals from a foreign entity of concern, such as China, which currently dominates 90%-95% of the graphite market, then you're disqualified for these credits. So this provides significant incentive for our customers to be working with us as a local supplier to ensure that their battery cells and their vehicles are 30D compliant for these, for these programs. Lastly, I mentioned the access to capital support.
We were selected last year for a $150 million grant from the Department of Energy under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and we've been negotiating the terms of that grant with the Department of Energy in terms of how to best utilize that capital for our growth plans. We've also been invited to diligence, the phase 3 diligence with our Loan Programs Office application, that would be looking to fund a new facility for our continued expansion of the company moving forward. And so, of course, capital intensity is much higher in North America than the existing Asian supply chain, so access to capital support programs from the federal government can provide significant benefits to the company as we scale and also help to decrease those operating costs. If we look quickly at our strategic relationships, the first I'll mention is with KORE Power.
So KORE Power is a US-based battery cell technology producer, and we've been working with them since 2019 through our Battery Technology Solutions division to validate KORE's battery technology as they look to build a plant here in North America. In 2021, they announced the investment they plan to make in a 12 gigawatt hour facility in Buckeye, Arizona, with a target of beginning production late next year. We signed a supply agreement with KORE to become the exclusive supplier of graphite to that facility. So we will be scaling our production in Riverside to support their needs, which are planned to start at an initial 3 gigawatt hour scale, which would be about 3,000 tons per year run rate of graphite. And we'll continue to increase our output of KORE-based product to meet their facility requirements as they scale to 12,000 tons per year.
On the next slide, we look at our partnership with LG Energy Solution. They're, of course, one of the largest battery manufacturers globally, and they have plans to have 250 gigawatt hours of capacity here in North America. So this represents almost 200,000 tons or more of potential graphite demand. So we've been working very closely with LG on validating our process technology, our products, through their qualification programs, and earlier this year, we announced entering into a joint research and development program focused on the qualification all the way through mass production qualification of an LG-specific product. Upon successful completion of that joint development agreement, LG will have the option to enter into a supply agreement for 50,000 tons of graphite over a 10-year term, and through this, they invested $30 million in a convertible note.
There's a few really important things to take away from this. The first is that we are making a market here in North America for what battery-grade graphite will look like and how it will be contracted. Typical contracting terms for battery graphite in Asia are shorter terms, spot, quarter, or annual. You know, this contemplates a first 10-year term. So it shows the importance of working with large strategic partners that have long-term visions for the materials that they want in North America. And when we develop these technologies that meet their requirements, they want to see and build us into long-term suppliers.
It's also important to recognize that 50,000 tons over 10 years may not be the most significant volume, but of course, as we look to meet all of our cost targets to produce the materials that LG is looking for within the pricing framework that we've agreed to, there is significant upside in potentially increasing the volumes as their demand will be so significant. And all of this on the basis that they've also invested $30 million to support us reaching that mass production qualification because they see the view of NOVONIX becoming a significant supplier here in the North American market. So when we look at our growth plans for our Anode Materials division, it starts with Riverside, and it starts with our KORE Power.
I mentioned starting at about a 3,000 ton per year run rate at the end of next year. Now, as KORE scales up to about 12,000 tons a year over the next couple of years, we also have the ability now with this upsized Riverside target of 20,000 tons, to bring other tier one customers into that facility. So that's what we look at as our first phase of growth. And then, of course, in addition to that, we'll be looking to add greenfield facilities. Our first initial planned greenfield facility was a 30,000 ton expansion site with potential future expansion beyond that. And of course, with the progress we've made within Riverside, we're looking at our engineering package for what that optimized size of the next site will look like.
And a lot of that will come from the engineering work that we'll complete in the first quarter of next year. All of this is to scale to our goal of 150,000 tons of production domestically. And if we think back to the market slides that we saw earlier, this represents about a 12% market share for the North American market, right? So there is still the need for other players in the battery graphite space, both natural and synthetic, because the market demand is so huge and the ability to scale in the North American market presents challenges, and we believe we have a clear path forward on those through demonstrating what we've done at our Riverside site. All of this focus in North America, there are significant opportunities to scale this technology globally as we look at competing on the global scale.
We spoke earlier about the opportunities in Europe, which look very similar to that in North America, but we've also signed a joint venture in Saudi Arabia with plans to build a facility in Saudi Arabia by 2030 to reach 30,000 tons of capacity. As we look at how to deploy our technology into what will be a global market of high-performance batteries for electrification. So now we'll change gears and look at our cathode technology. High nickel cathode synthesis is growing significantly, especially here in North America as well. And so the same thesis for our Anode Materials division applies here in how we can develop cleaner process technology for key materials that need to be developed here in the Western world.
When we look at high nickel cathode synthesis today, it's a very complex wet chemical process that uses sulfate input materials and has waste streams, including waste water and sodium sulfate waste. All this to produce a precursor material, a mixed metal material, that is then mixed with lithium and heated in order to produce the final NMC cathode materials. What we developed and started filing patent applications around in 2020, was actually an all-dry, zero-waste process to make the same types of precursors that we then convert to final NMC products.... So we were using mechanical milling and dry processing with flexible inputs in terms of types of metal or sulfates, that we could then produce precursor materials, heat with lithium, and produce these same grades of high nickel cathodes.
And so the premise would be that this much simplified process must have benefits both environmentally and economically. But first, we had to show that the performance of these materials was in line with industry expectations. So the next slide really shows where we've brought our product program within our cathode technology team. And on the left-hand side shows a capacity retention curve over about 400 cycles, with multiple commercial cathode materials from Asia, leading materials in full cells, and one of our grades of mid-nickel cathode materials, NMC 622. And so what we can see is that our performance is almost exactly in line with these other leading cathode materials in full cell testing.
While it may be at the bottom of the performance curve in terms of the pack of four materials, it's important to recognize that our material is not coated or surface treated, whereas all of the actual finished products coming from Asia would also have a surface treatment. So this is an area for significant improvement and us to continue to develop IP around how to further improve these materials. The genesis of our technology is focused on our precursor technology and making the materials to get to this stage. So on the right-hand side, you see electron microscope images of these different particles, the commercial materials, as well as ours, again, showing that we can make materials that behave performance-wise and structurally exactly in line with industry expectations.
When we look at the next slide, we want to look and understand what have been the historical challenges and why this complex process technology has been adopted by the industry. The challenge in making these high nickel cathode materials is that they are a mixed metal material. So these nickel, manganese, cobalt materials, we want to have perfect atomic dispersion within the particle. So in the conventional process, you can see on the left a scanning electron microscope image, and then an elemental mapping of that image. The colors green, red, and blue represent the nickel, manganese, and cobalt content at the different areas within that image. What you see on those left-hand set of images is that those color spectrums are completely balanced, right? So you have complete uniform dispersion of nickel, manganese, and cobalt.
But historically, when people tried to make all dry cathode materials, the challenge was that they couldn't mimic this uniformity in dispersion. And so what you see in the middle of the chart, in the middle of the slide, is the same type of imaging, where you see the nickel, manganese, and cobalt in green, red, and yellow, in green, red, and blue again, but the dispersion is not uniform. And this non-uniform dispersion leads to challenges in the product performance. And so for this reason, the early attempts to make all dry cathode materials were not pursued, and the continuous stirred- tank reactor wet chemical process is what's been adopted by the industry. But on the next slide, we look at how we've overcome that challenge.
With our process technology, we look now on the left at scanning transmission electron microscope imaging to do the same type of elemental mapping. And on the left-hand side, you see again nickel, manganese, and cobalt color dispersions, and you can see general uniformity in a commercial-made product through the wet chemical process. When we do the same type of imaging on the right-hand side, once again, you can see perfect uniformity in both the nickel, manganese, and cobalt dispersions within one of our materials made through our all-dry process. So we have solved one of the critical challenges that people saw when trying to develop all-dry processing of these high nickel cathode materials. And that's why the material performance that we saw a few slides ago is able to match directly in line with the existing technologies.
So when we look at where we are with this technology today, we announced earlier this year we commissioned our 10-ton per year pilot line. Because developing and demonstrating new technologies at the lab and pilot scale is important and critical in the pathway to commercialization, but having a clear path to mass production is critical. And just like we've done with our Anode Materials division, taking our graphitization technology from lab to pilot to now mass production at Riverside, we need to show the same path for our cathode technology. And so we're now operating at pilot level. But the benefit to our cathode technology is that we are not inventing new machines and new processing steps. We are using existing scaled processing from other industries and applying it to how we can make these high nickel cathode materials.
Therefore, our path to going from pilot to mass, mass production is very straightforward. So our focus now is how we can continue to develop IP, prove out the product performance at our pilot scale, the engineering benefits that we'll speak about in a minute on our road to commercialization. With our pilot line operating, we've now been able to engage on understanding the benefits of our processing technology. We engaged Hatch as a third-party engineering firm to do an initial engineering assessment of our technology compared to the traditional technology, to both look at environmental and economic benefits of the process technology. As we expected when we started filing patent applications around this process technology, we see the simplification of the process resulting in benefits across the board.
The results of this initial study were a decrease in capital intensity by about 30% relative to conventional processing, a decrease in operating costs by about 50%. So it's important to recognize that the metals themselves, the lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt, represent on the order of 90% of the cost of high-nickel cathode materials. And therefore, this operational cost and 50% reduction could lead to about a 5% decrease in the actual cost of high-nickel cathode materials, which is still significant when they represent such a huge fraction of the cost of the cell. And all of these benefits coming while we use about 27% less energy, 65% less wastewater, and again, no production of sodium sulfate and no use of ammonia, significantly improving the ESG profile of these materials.
We're going to continue to pursue refining this engineering and defining these benefits more concretely as we look at also engaging in our commercialization of this product through either partnerships with existing cathode manufacturers, with the opportunity to license this technology, or working with downstream customers, as we do in our anode materials business, to gauge interest and develop specific products that would meet the needs of leading tier one manufacturers. As we wrap up, we really think about our pathway to the next generation of technologies. We started the discussion by talking about the focus on longer life process technologies and longer life materials, and trying to summarize here the type of impact that choosing the right materials and having the right process technology can have in terms of the longevity of batteries, illustrated here in the concept of a million-mile battery.
So what you see here, moving from left to right, is using traditional polycrystalline 622 cathodes with synthetic graphite, moving to single crystal cathodes with natural graphite, seeing some improvement, single crystal cathodes with synthetic graphite. And then you start to layer in NOVONIX's technology in terms of new electrolyte systems that can improve the battery performance further, or the switch to our anode materials technologies that can significantly improve the battery performance, as we saw in some of the previous slides. And it's our goal to now be able to also demonstrate the use of our single crystal 622 cathode technology with our anode materials technology and electrolyte systems, in terms of being able to offer materials that support the longest life batteries in the industry to support this transition to electrification for vehicles and energy storage systems.
So when we think about the future of NOVONIX, we continue to stay focused on being at the forefront of product innovation. We've become a recognized leader across the industry, both through our Battery Technology Solutions group as well as the work that we're doing on the materials level with our anode and Cathode Materials team. Our primary focus is scaling our anode materials business toward that production target of 150,000 tons over the coming years, and now continuing to support the development and commercialization of our all dry, zero waste cathode synthesis technology. All of this while continuing to develop IP positions in leading markets where we see future growth in the battery sector to build new divisions of the business to generate strong cash flows and operating margins.
So with that, I'd like to wrap up and focus on the Q&A that we have today. We are going to become a significant player here in the North American market, growing from our technology solutions group roots into new process technologies that are going to enable significant growth in anode and cathode materials. We're very pleased with where we're placed in the market, the progress that we've made to date, and the huge milestones that we plan to deliver on in the coming year. Thank you very much.
Chris, thank you. We've received many questions that are focused on several topics, and we have tried our best to consolidate the many good questions received in a concise list that covers the additional insight into our businesses. There were many questions that focused on our customers and the qualifying process. Chris, can you give us an update on the status of each of your agreements on with Sanyo through LGES and the process of obtaining customers?
Absolutely. So of course, we've signed several agreements, as I mentioned in the presentation, both with Samsung, Panasonic Energy, or at the time they were Sanyo. And then as MOUs, our supply agreement with KORE Power, and now our investment agreement and joint development agreement with LG Energy Solution. And I think those really represent the map in terms of how we progress customers from early engagement through product qualification into supply agreements or formalized agreements with LG, for example, and a clear path to a supply agreement.
So we continue to work with all of the major tier ones and continue to work very closely with Samsung and Panasonic as well in terms of the products that they're looking to bring to market here in North America, and a focus on how our materials and our process technologies can produce their needs and their specifications, and then understanding the timeline and commercial agreements. As I said, these agreements take time because we are making a market here in North America. And as we look at the production timelines for many of these companies coming in the next few years, this is where we hope to continue to solidify our partnership with these different OEMs and bring them either into our Riverside facility or into future greenfield sites.
We've also had several questions on the anode materials business. Are you enlarging the facility at Riverside or just making the furnaces bigger?
That's a great question. So there are a number of factors that are leading to the ability to hopefully increase the output production at Riverside. We are not looking at physically expanding the footprint of the building, but now hitting all of our engineering targets for our production, and also understanding the rest of our process technology and really the targeted products that we'll produce out of that site, we're able to really specify the engineering to exactly the product lines that we want and remove some of the contingencies that we initially held in our estimates. So we may look at having to increase the utilities to the building, power, or other infrastructure, but really our goal is to, within the existing footprint, be able to maximize the output of that site and thus leverage the returns to investors from that project.
Next, you described the environmental footprint with your technology versus the Acheson furnaces in China. Do you want to expand upon that, please?
Sure. I think it's a huge benefit that we bring to the market, and it's especially significant when scaling here in the Western world. When we started the Anode Materials division in 2017, we really took the position that it was almost infeasible to build an Acheson facility in North America. If it was possible, the permitting times would almost be prohibitive, because these systems are hugely energy-consuming, they use huge amounts of energy in terms of that metric I referenced earlier, kilowatt hours per kilogram. And they are an open-pit furnace, where the emissions from the facility, any of the volatiles that are coming off in that very ultra-high temperature processing step, are simply emitted to the atmosphere.
Now, you can build environmental controls around that to try to limit those emissions, but they are still going to be significant emitters in terms of their sites in North America. So our ability for our Generation 3 furnace systems to be powder in, powder out, a continuous basis, this leads to great product quality and consistency, as we saw in some of the charts. And most notably, we flow process gas through these systems that we then recover, clean, and repurify to reuse in the process. So these are essentially zero-emission furnaces, which offers a huge benefit in our ability to deploy them both in Riverside and in future facilities in North America.
Our next question is, what is the timeline for your capacity ramp at Riverside and time towards commercialization and revenues?
So Riverside, we've been focused on demonstrating our production technology, which we've now had huge milestones in, and we're really focused on matching our customer timeline. In today's market, we have to make our investments and our capital investments to match the timeline that will bring revenue, and that first supply agreement with KORE Power is what we're targeting, bringing production online for late next year. Again, with the ability to bring new customers into... hopefully, 1-2 new customers into our Riverside facility, we'll look at the timeline of different customers that we have targeted to hopefully continue to increase the output of that facility in 2025 and beyond and reach that 20,000-ton target. But we're going to be very intentional about our capacity ramp-up being governed by the agreements that we have, because these materials are not commodities. These are specialized materials.
We talked a bit about the products and the performance differentiation, but the materials that are asked for by each of the leading cell manufacturers look different because of how they use them in the battery and what application the battery is going to. It's critical that we understand the right products for the right customers, and we make those investments in the facility to match those agreements.
So that's a good lead-in to this question. The product you are making, GX-23, is that the product for KORE or LGES?
So our GX-23 product is one of our earlier grades of material, and of course, we have the most experience producing that, both at pilot scale and mass production. So we're using it. We used it for the basis of our life cycle assessment, and we use it for all of our commissioning and production campaigns that are happening right now within Riverside. But it won't necessarily be the product for either KORE or LG, but it provides the basis for the process technology to be proven out at mass production, and maybe variants from those products are in different qualification programs with KORE, LG, and others.
What is your timeline now for the greenfield site, and is it still planned for Tennessee?
That's a great question. So we, of course, filed our application for the I nfrastructure Law grant last year. That application was written around a greenfield facility and a potential site in Tennessee. That site is still being considered, but we also are looking at, at other sites in the Southeast as well. But the timeline of that is really going to be dictated by financing and customer agreements. Our work with the Loan Programs Office is going very well, and we hope that they will be the largest financer of that next facility. But of course, in today's market, we have to secure the financing package, which also goes with the customers.
Of course, the work that we have with LG and their investment and our partnership towards producing for them in the future is a huge underpinning principle to us progressing through that financing work toward a new facility. Similar to our build-out at Riverside, it has to be based around the customer agreements we have and the timeline for those start-of-production targets, because we have to be making the targeted products for our targeted customers.
Our next question goes back towards the economics. There was a question on, NOVONIX had quoted a synthetic graphite price was probably going to be in the $8-$12 range, and now you're, you're commenting on a $7-$10 range. Can you provide a little bit more color in that regard?
... Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we, we've always held a wide range on our, our sales prices, and again, as I mentioned, not necessarily because the same product may have a wide range of potential sale price, but the products themselves are materially different, both in their performance and in their processing, and therefore, in their cost and, and relative sale price.
We have seen synthetic graphite pricing under pressure this year as China continues to increase its capacity, and that still does have an impact here in the local market, although it's not one-to-one, because all of these pricing targets that we represent here from $7-$10, they really represent that which we're hearing from the customer, and they do represent a premium still to North America based on these different programs, such as the need for 30D compliance, the need to avoid being subject to Section 301 tariffs. So we think these are very realistic prices to target, especially out of Riverside. As the market continues to evolve, and if we see that local premium increase for any number of reasons, then that will be something that we benefit from.
But we must be able to produce at globally competitive rates, and we now have demonstrated this clear path to do so and be competitive on a global scale.
Here is a question on the cathode business. Why are you excited about the 5% savings on the process in the cathode synthesis, and how large could that business become?
That's a great question. You know, the battery industry is an incredibly interesting place because while there's such a drive for localization, there's also such a drive for cost competitiveness, right? One of the biggest impediments to the adoption of electric vehicles remains the price of an electric vehicle relative to an internal combustion engine vehicle. And of course, a significant driver in that price is the cost of the battery itself. So when you look at these high nickel cathode-based batteries, the cathode itself could represent 30%-35% of the cost of the battery. And so when everyone is trying to paint a roadmap to getting back to $100 per kilowatt hour or lower, these are where every percentage point you can find in that cost structure matters.
And so being able to save 5%, potentially on the most expensive single component within the battery, is still a significant economic benefit. That being coupled with the environmental benefits, and again, the importance of that in the North American market, we think makes this an incredibly attractive technology and something that, you know, we see a huge future for in the coming years.
And lastly, the question was around the DOE grants and the LPO process. What are the bottlenecks, in the awards of the, the MESC grant and the LPO loan process? And did the technical updates, help de-risk those processes?
Yeah, that's, that's a great question. You know, the government is doing an amazing job to support this industry, but they're also doing something unprecedented in terms of trying to move at a scale and speed, which is very challenging for the government. So, you know, it has been almost a year since they announced the recipients of the Infrastructure Law grant. It's now being administered by MESC, the Manufacturing Energy Supply Chain team. And, you know, the, we're just now starting to see a lot of those awards get contracted. So we're not an anomaly to be, you know, taking this long in the process, and we're simply working out the details of the project and how we can best use this program, as well as our work with the Loan Programs Office to support the growth of the company as we look at both our Riverside-