NanoGraf aims to ‘usher in the next generation of electric vehicles’ with new Flint plant

By Ron Fonger

September 27, 2024

FLINT, MI -- The chief executive officer of a leading battery materials company said Friday that his goal is to do nothing less than help “usher in the next generation of electric vehicles” at a $175-million facility on the site of General Motors’ old Buick City complex in Flint.

Standing in the future home of NanoGraf, on the ground where GM once employed nearly 30,000 workers on Friday, Sept. 27, CEO Francis Wang said the Illinois-based company plans to help produce electric vehicles for the next generation of drivers by providing battery materials that allow cars to charge faster and cover longer ranges at a lower cost.

Last week, NanoGraf received a $60-million grant from the U.S. Department Energy for the Flint project.

The city’s history and its people have already “touched our hearts” and “given new meaning to what we do,” Wang told local, state, federal and economic development officials during the announcement.

“We’ve gotten emails from people who saw the announcement and said, ‘Hey, I want to work at this plant’ ... They say, ‘I have a grandpa who worked at Buick City,’ or a cousin or an uncle or an aunt ...,” he said. “We would never get that (response) in Chicago,” where NanGraf currently produces silicon anode material for the U.S. military at two locations.

Founded in 2012, the company focuses on enhancing battery energy density, which allows batteries to store more energy, last longer, and charge faster using silicon powder instead of the commonly used graphite.

A groundbreaking for the Flint facility is expected in 2025, with an official opening in 2027.

The project will create approximately 200 construction jobs through a project labor agreement with the North American Building Trades Union and up to 150 new permanent jobs will be created for operations, approximately 80% of which are expected to come from the Flint area.

The company has said it plans to produce 2,500 tons of its proprietary silicon anode battery material annually – enough material to supply 1.5 million EV batteries per year.

Matt McCauley, senior vice president of regional development for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, said Friday that the former brownfield site where NanoGraf is locating wouldn’t have been thought of as a potential location for a new technology company just a few years ago but makes sense given the city’s history and efforts to redevlop the property.

“We are the state -- this is the community -- that put the world on wheels,” McCauley said. “This is the natural place for investing to put that legacy of manufacturing, making things, and making sure the world moves forward,” to work.

U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Twp., said the project has natural ties to Flint’s automotive history but also offers the potential to spark new spinoff investments.

“One hundred years ago this year, my grandfather and my grandmother moved from Buckley, Michigan, to New York Avenue, just a few steps from where we are right now, for my grandfather to go to work at Buick on this site,” Kildee said.

“His generation -- their generation -- helped build our community ...,” he said. “What we are celebrating today is not just that history but the fact that other families are going to make that same decision because of the investment we are seeing here today.”

The Buick City complex on Flint’s north side opened in 1904 and became known as “Buick City” in 1985 after company and union officials launched a plan to bring supplier plants on the property, cutting down on potential supply chain issues.

At its peak, nearly 30,000 GM employees worked at the site.

But the last Buick rolled off the plant’s assembly line on June 29, 1999, and operations ceased completely in 2010, ending more than 100 years of manufacturing at the site that once produced every Buick built by GM.

Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley welcomed the company and U.S. Department of Energy Under Secretary for Infrastructure David Crane to the city for Friday’s announcement.

Neeley has been a booster of the redevelopment of the Buick City site and the creation of the Flint Commerce Center by Ashley Capital.

Ashley completed the purchase of roughly 300 acres of the former GM property late last year from the Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response (RACER) Trust, which was charged with cleaning up contamination and reselling the former Buick site and 88 other properties that were abandoned by GM during its 2009 bankruptcy.

Ashley broke ground on the first building in the Commerce Center more than a year ago on 20 acres it purchased in advance of the closing on the purchase of the additional 273 acres from RACER.

Last month, Victory Packaging, a company with ties to GM, announced it would become the first tenant at the center.