Ottawa, Canada – This Thursday, delegates from Japan met with the Canadian government to sign a new battery supply-chain agreement as Canada seeks to extend its position in the EV battery market.
With the partnership, Canada hopes to create trade agreements for the use and manufacturing of the country’s wealth of resources, such as lithium, while Japan hopes to secure access to lucrative North American EV subsidiaries for its automakers.
Industry Minister Francoise-Philippe Champagne withheld the full details of the agreement from the press, but did note–alongside comments made by Natural Resource Minister Johnathan Wilkinson–that discussions were underway with both Toyota and Honda.
The CEO of Prime Planet Energy and Solutions, the three-year old automotive battery-maker created by Toyota and Panasonic, was also in Ottawa Thursday to sign a separate agreement to work with Vancouver-based FPX Nickel Corp. Panasonic Energy also signed a co-operation pact with Quebec’s Nouveau Monde Graphite.
Those deals were separate from the government-to-government “memorandum of co-operation,” which Wilkinson said is a typical part of negotiations and business dealings with Japan and its companies, laying out a framework for companies from the two countries to then make their own deals.
Within recent years, Canada has laid out tens of billions of dollars to establish itself as a global battery leader, with investments in more than a dozen battery supply chain and manufacturing companies.
Last year, Champagne was in Japan three times making the pitch for Canada’s battery material capacity to Japanese automakers and electronics giants.
While talks are still underway, current agreements signal the beginning of Canada’s step onto a larger global stage when it comes to electrification.
