Top Material said on Jan. 29 it has established a wholly owned local unit in Silicon Valley in the United States. The company plans to expand systems engineering and cathode material operations at the same time through the new unit. It aims to overcome order hurdles caused by past U.S. tariff policies by operating the local unit.

Top Material secured a $10 million systems engineering contract from California-based ECF (Electrochemistry Foundry) immediately after establishing the unit. ECF is a secondary battery centre being set up with support from the California state government. It provides facilities to secondary battery startups in the United States and supports sample testing.

Top Material's U.S. unit will supply ECF with a turnkey full secondary battery production line. It will then operate the facility directly for 2 years. The company said it views the contract as recognition in the U.S. market of its production line build-out technology and its capabilities in materials and cell design. It also recently completed a lithium iron phosphate cathode material production line in Pyeongtaek Brain City. It is currently conducting test runs for full-scale production and sales.

A Top Material official said, "By operating a Silicon Valley battery centre, we secured points of contact with U.S. customers." The official said, "It is significant in that we established a foothold for systems engineering orders and entry into the U.S. market for the cathode material business." The official added, "We faced difficulties last year due to a downturn in the secondary battery industry, but from this year we will achieve our best performance since founding through orders for large-scale projects and full-scale material sales."