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REC Silicon’s manufacturing site in Moses Lake, Washington. (REC Silicon Photo)
Silicon manufacturing company REC Silicon is ceasing operations in Moses Lake, Wash., but left the door open to a future restart that could benefit battery makers.
The Norway-based business announced the move last week. It will lay off 224 workers later this month, according to a new filing with the state’s Employment Security Department made public Monday.
The company was an essential draw for next-generation battery materials startups including Group14 Technologies, Sila and OneD Battery Sciences, which are all building manufacturing sites in the Eastern Washington town.
REC Silicon is the only company in the U.S. producing silane gas used in silicon battery anodes that significantly improve battery performance.
However, in April 2022, South Korean solar panel maker Hanwha Solutions became the largest shareholder of REC Silicon. Hanwha made a deal to take the majority of the silicon being produced at the Moses Lake site, which it uses as polysilicon. That left a greatly limited silicon supply for battery materials companies.
Rick Luebbe, CEO of Group14, said the deal with Hanwha was a “bit of a curveball for the battery industry because we were looking to that silane to support our own growth.”
REC Silicon previously paused work at the Moses Lake plant in 2019 due to Chinese tariffs on its silicon products that made operations unfeasible. But in 2020 it announced plans to begin the multi-year process to restart operations and supply silane to Group14, one of the most well-funded startups in the Seattle region.
In a regulatory filing, REC Silicon said that its equipment for silicon gases will be maintained in a recoverable mode to enable potential future use.
In regard to the Moses Lake facility closure, REC Silicon said it was unable to produce sufficiently pure polysilicon as was required by Hanwha. The solar panel company is still building a manufacturing site in Georgia and had planned on using the material produced in Washington.
GeekWire reached out to REC Silicon and will update this story if we hear back.
REC Silicon runs a second plant in Butte, Mont. It shut down polysilicon production there in February 2024, but is still making silane gas at the facility.
Group14, in the meantime, is pursuing its own silane production. In September the company announced that it received a $200 million grant from the Department of Energy to build a silane plant in Moses Lake where it’s currently erecting its BAM-2 factory.
Group14 expects to begin production of its silicon-carbon anode materials at BAM-2 in the next couple of months. In the near term it will source its silane from REC Silicon’s Montana site, but it will ultimately need more gas than is being produced there. Sila also has an agreement to buy silane from REC Silicone.
There’s a chance that REC Silicon restarts the plant and begins making silane at the Moses Lake facility, and Group14’s plant won’t be as essential, Luebbe said, so his company might change plans in the future. It will take about three years to build a new silane facility.
“At this point, I just don’t know what the future for REC really is,” Luebbe said. “So we’re proceeding with our own plan to build our own plant.”
