Graphite One explains interest in Conneaut
Graphite One continues preparing engineering for its plant to be developed in the Conneaut Harbor toward the end of the decade.
G1 COO Mike Schaffner said the company is looking to build its plant at portion of the CN property where coal used to be stockpiled after being brought in on barges. It is located to the east of Conneaut Creek and northwest of the CN rail yard.
The designs of the plant are based on previous Chinese designs and need to be converted into US measuring and regulation standards, he said.
Schaffner said the company hopes to have engineering finished in six months, and will have community meetings Conneaut area in the latter part of this year or early 2027.
"We want to be able to lay out a good picture for these guys and show them exactly what's going on," he said. "Once we get the engineering far enough along than we can do that."
No ground-breaking date has been set on the first phase, but Schaffner said G1 hopes to start in the first quarter of 2027.
G1 announced its plans for an AAM plant back in May, cancelling a previous one in Trumbull County.
The company looked at Conneaut for around two to three months before their announcement, Schaffner said.
"When we were working with First Energy, we found out that the power was going to take too long, and it didn't meet our schedule," he said. "Then, we went out looking for a site that had preexisting power, and the Conneaut site had the transformers installed that we needed that allowed us to make our production schedule."
AAMs would go into battery anodes, the largest part of a battery, Schaffner said.
"We're one component of the battery," he said. "So, we're the anode component. You also have to put in a cathode."
All the different types of batteries, from cadmium to lithium iron phosphate, use an anode made out of graphite, Schaffner said.
Thus, the anodes that come out of G1 can be used in all sorts of batteries, including for electric cars, he said.
Much of the current market for graphite has been for batteries for data centers growing across the United States, he said.
Schaffner said he does not see data centers as the main future users of graphite.
"I see the solar and the wind industries as the huge usage, because as we start transitioning to more and more wind and solar, you've got to have backups for when the wind doesn't blow, and the sun doesn't shine, and these are just massive battery systems," he said.
There are some challenges for the US graphite market currently, like uncertainty around tariffs, Schaffner said.
"What we need is consistency in tariffs," he said. "You need to know a number. It needs to stay. It can't change every other week."
Schaffner said some tariffs are required on China for a US graphite market to do well.
"China is subsidizing every one of their anode facilities over there," he said. "So, their capital costs are very, very cheap, and their labor costs are about a tenth of the cost in the US. So, you're not going to be able to compete. It's not a level playing field."
According to previous releases from G1, the company aims to develop a vertically integrated graphite production line in the United States.
Tariffs on Canada are not as much of challenge for when graphite is shipped from Alaska to Conneaut, Schaffner said.
The company aims to produce product by the end of 2027 and start of 2028, he said.
"Because the technology is really developing in the US, we actually are building this in stages in the reverse order," Schaffner said. "So, we're building the finishing and blending plants first, and then we'll import the graphitized material. We'll perfect that process."
The finishing and blending plant will be where the material is coated, he said.
"Then, we'll go back and we'll build the graphitization, and that's to produce the artificial [graphite] that would go into the finishing and blending," Schaffner said. "Then, we'll go in and we'll build the precursor. That's kind of the secret sauce that goes into the front end of the graphitization."
That whole process will take the company until the end of 2029, he said.
G1 recently completed a feasibility study and is currently doing the permitting for a mine site in Alaska, which would not start until 2029, Schaffner said.
Before the mine starts operation, the planned Conneaut graphite plant will produce synthetic graphite.
Synthetic graphite is made from petroleum products, and is similar, but not the exact same thing as natural graphite, which comes from mining, Schaffner said.
"When you look at the EV industry, they use both natural and synthetic," he said.
Natural graphite will be added later as the mine opens up and the company does more work at the plant, Schaffner said.
Conneaut offers a lot of advantages for G1's potential plant, Schaffner said.
"It was kind of the Goldilocks site," he said. "It had the rail that we needed, it had the power that we needed and then it had the benefit of having the Great Lakes connection with that. When you put all that together, it became a very attractive site."
Lake Erie offers a bonus with future potential, though the company does not have any current plans for Great Lakes shipping, Schaffner said.
"There's a huge opportunity to take some of our byproduct to some of the iron ore smelters, because they use graphite in the hardening of their steel," he said.
The plant's location near major sites of the American auto industry also makes it viable, Schaffner said.
