Norwegian lithium-ion battery gigafactory group FREYR reported a US$35 million loss in the first quarter of 2022 and has recently announced three conditional offtake agreements (COA) totalling 53.5GWh.
FREYR finished the quarter with cash and equivalents of US$524.6 million. It announced a COA with global battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator Powin Energy yesterday worth 28.5GWh from 2024-2030, as reported on Energy-Storage.news. The company has confirmed to this site that it is a separate deal to the 31GWh it announced with an unnamed partner last year.
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FREYR has also signed COAs with an unnamed ‘leading global storage systems integrator’ for 15GWh of volumes from 2023-2027, and an unnamed ‘major U.S. renewables company’ for 10GWh for BESS applications. Together with Powin, those bring the total offtake agreements announced in the quarter to 53GWh.
FREYR also reached advanced negotiations for another 100GWh of potential offtake from 2024-2030 with two companies, including a major commercial mobility company.
As regards to its gigafactories, it started pre-construction work at one of two planned gigafactories in Mo i Rana, Norway, which are set to open in 2023-24, including ground-work preparation and detailed engineering. Its customer qualification plant (CQP) in the same city is expected to start factory acceptance testing in the second half of year.
The gigafactories that FREYR has announced total around US$4 billion in investment. The company said that its cash burn rate will increase modestly in the second quarter of the year as construction activity ramps-up.
It is “exploring capital formation solutions to finance giga-scale development” with global institutions and government entities in Norway, the EU and the US. This could include a combination of grants, bridge loans and direct lending.
Several management appointments were also made in the period. It appointed Oscar Brown as CFO and Andreas Bentzen as EVP of Technology, both in April.
FREYR, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) through a SPAC merger in July 2021, has seven gigafactories planned to launch by 2030 which will total 100GWh of annual production capacity.
