European gigafactory group FREYR’s new technology resources campus and business unit in Japan could see it partner with companies in addition to existing technology provider 24M, CEO Tom Jensen told Energy-Storage.news.

The new business unit is the company’s first physical location in Asia and will primarily focus on facilitating and scaling up FREYR’s testing and development of the lithium-ion battery production technology from 24M. 24M is the lithium-ion battery production technology FREYR is using for its gigafactory projects in Europe and the US, as CEO Tom Jensen explained in a previous interview with Energy-Storage.news.

When asked about the new unit and why the company chose Japan, Jensen told this site: “Lithium ion batteries came from Japan in the first place, and it used to be the dominant player in the space until the Chinese and Korean companies took over, but there is still a lot of competence and capacity across all form factors and chemistries there.”

The facility will mainly run electrochemical testing of various materials related to 24M’s technology development, while also providing a platform for the recruitment and hiring of experienced battery engineering talent.

Jensen added that the existing ecosystem of battery technologies in the country could mean FREYR eventually partners with providers other than 24M, even if the facility is initially focused on the Massachusetts-based firm.

“What Japan has missed out on was the speed of implementing large manufacturing systems, which they have now done in China and we like to look upon ourselves as an industrialisation partner of choice,” he said.

“So we do think there are opportunities to actually partner with a number of Japanese companies alongside and complementary to 24M to see if we can sort of be replicating the learnings we had in building Giga factories with the 24M technology into other technologies as well.”

The company recently doubled its long-term capacity target for 2030 to 200GWh, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.