Smoltek

MAXBATT unites leading Swedish and international stakeholders across the battery value chain to accelerate competitive, sustainable, and circular battery manufacturing. Smoltek's participation brings a unique materials engineering capability to the consortium: its proprietary carbon nanofiber growth technology for next generation battery additives.

Through this partnership, Smoltek will engage in joint research projects, validation activities, and industrialization pathways that support MAXBATT's mission to build a climate neutral, competitive European battery industry. The collaboration positions Smoltek to accelerate the transition from laboratory scale CNF breakthroughs to industrially relevant materials solutions.

Smoltek CEO Magnus Andersson highlights the strategic importance of joining MAXBATT: "Becoming part of MAXBATT is a natural progression for Smoltek. It strengthens our pathway toward broader industrial applications and supports our strategy to scale CNF based solutions into markets where performance, sustainability, and manufacturability are decisive."

MAXBATT focuses on production technologies, industrialization, digitalization, and sustainability for lithium ion and emerging battery chemistries. Smoltek's vertically grown carbon nanofibers (CNFs) offer a new class of engineered conductive additives designed to improve electrode performance, reduce carbon loading, and support high areal loading cathodes and fast charging applications. Smoltek's growth process enables precise control of CNF morphology, uniformity, and integration into slurry-based electrode manufacturing as additive - a critical requirement for gigafactory scale deployment.

Björn Johansson, Head of the MAXBATT Competence Center, welcomes Smoltek's entry: "Smoltek's carbon nanofiber technology represents an exciting and strategically important addition to MAXBATT. Their capability to engineer advanced carbon materials aligns strongly with our mission to strengthen Sweden's position in sustainable, high performance battery manufacturing."

Smoltek's founder, Shafiq Kabir, who is driving the collaboration schemes, emphasized the long-term vision behind the collaboration: "Our ambition is to validate, industrialize, and expand Smoltek's CNF technology across the entire value chain - from raw materials to battery cell manufacturing and beyond. Engineered carbon nanostructures will play an increasingly critical role in multiple sectors, and MAXBATT provides the ideal environment to accelerate this journey through deep collaboration with leading researchers, cell developers and industrial partners."

About MAXBATT

MAXBATT is a national initiative funded by Västra Götaland Region (VGR) that aims to strengthen Sweden's battery industry by advancing sustainable production technologies, digital manufacturing, large-scale production, circular processes and workforce development.