Panasonic partnership turned Redwood supplier
Redwood Materials
The Panasonic deal mattered because it gave Redwood the one thing every recycling startup needs first, a steady stream of battery scrap from a real gigafactory. That turned Redwood from a lab scale recycler into part of an operating battery plant in Nevada, where it could collect production waste, recover nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper, and prove those materials could move back into battery manufacturing instead of being shipped overseas.
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This was not a small pilot. Redwood says it has recycled all of Panasonic’s manufacturing scrap from the Tesla Gigafactory since 2019, then expanded that relationship into supplying anode copper foil for Nevada and cathode material for Panasonic’s Kansas plant. That shows the first contract solved supply, then unlocked product sales.
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The practical workflow is simple. Panasonic makes cells in Nevada and generates scrap. Redwood, a few miles away in Northern Nevada, takes that scrap, extracts the metals, refines them, and turns some of that output into battery components. That local loop cuts transport, lowers dependence on Asian processors, and makes Redwood part recycler, part materials supplier.
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This also set Redwood apart from recyclers like Li-Cycle and American Battery Technology Company that mainly stop at recovering raw materials. Redwood pushed further downstream into copper foil and cathode production, which captures more dollars per ton and makes it harder for customers to swap suppliers once Redwood is qualified inside their manufacturing process.
The next phase is bigger than recycling. The Panasonic partnership established Redwood as a domestic battery materials company, and that model now extends to more automakers, more battery plants, and new products like energy storage. If Redwood keeps turning scrap contracts into long term material supply agreements, it becomes core infrastructure for the U.S. battery supply chain.