In January 2025, Wiltshire Pension Fund's team had the opportunity to visit Anaphite- a UK-based company held by World Fund, a climate tech venture capital fund that forms part of our award winning Climate opportunities portfolio(Clops).
In 2019, Anaphite took part in the Faraday Battery Challenge, their aim was to drive innovation in the development of low-cost, reliable and long-range electric vehicles in the UK. Having won funding, Anaphite focused their attention on EV Batteries with the support of Science Creates, a Bristol-based incubator which provided Anaphite with the space and resources needed to start its journey.
Based just 15 minutes for Bristol Temple Meads and founded by students at the University of Bristol, Anaphite is a pioneering company aiming to harness chemistry to decarbonise automotive EV batteries.
The standard method of making electrodes is by wet-coating, which uses giant industrial ovens. Anaphite are developing a process to make a different method - dry coating, viable for industrial scale battery makers.
The team met with Anaphite's CEO, Joe Stevenson, and their Marketing and Communications Manager, Ginny Russell. It was explained that the global mass production of EV batteries will consume the energy equivalent of the UK's entire energy production, with 30% of this energy demand being used by the wet-coating method.
It is predicted that the dry-coating process being developed by Anaphite, could reduce the energy cost of battery production by 30% and make electric cars significantly cheaper. Additionally, battery manufacturers could save 15% of their floor space.To make a well performing electrode, the dry coating needs to be a homogeneous mixture of active material, conductive additives and binders. Dry mixing these materials is very difficult to do well, at industrial scales, due to numerous material handling and processing challenges.
Anaphite's main point of differentiation is the process they have developed to form a homogeneous composite material that enables their customers to produce better quality and higher performance electrodes. Their dry coating is applied to foil 12 microns thick (slightly thinner than the tin foil that you might find in your kitchen) to create the cathode.
This investment shows that competitive returns can be achieved alongside real world change:
- Driving technological innovation to reduce the global carbon footprint
- Harnessing chemistry to decarbonise automotive EV batteries
- Potential to reduce the energy cost of battery production by 30%, making electric cars significantly cheaper
- Investing in UK based companies supporting a global transition
- Collaboration with industry experts
Anaphite are working with automotive companies that together produce 40% of all cars sold worldwide!
Their process is licensed out to companies, so companies can use the design themselves after being developed by Anaphite in accordance with the customer's specifications.
Additionally, Anaphite are considering the possibility of making composite or complete electrodes in-house for their customers to use in their own cell manufacturing process.
However more development, investment, and floor space will be required to achieve this.
Anaphite have found the investor World Fund to be very useful, outside of simply providing capital, World Fund have a great network which Anaphite has benefited from.
Our visit to Anaphite highlights the opportunities available to companies that work towards global decarbonisation. Wiltshire Pension Fund are proud to be investing in UK-based companies that drive technological innovation to support the global transition alongside delivering strong financial returns.
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