Electrovaya officials are still bullish on the opening of a new plant in Ellicott despite it taking longer than expected to put plant construction financing together.

Construction in the former Acu-Rite plant in Ellicott was discussed several times by company officials during their conference call with investor analysts this week, with several analysts asking about the progress in converting the Acu-Rite plant into Electrovaya’s Gigafactory to make lithium ion batteries.

Raj Das Gupta, Electrovaya CEO, said the company is making progress towards securing financing for investment in the Ellicott project. It is expected financing will be government-backed.

“This is still progressing, but has been slower than we anticipated,” Das Gupta said. “That said, given improvements in supply chain and operations at our current facilities, we will not need the Jamestown output until 2026.”

One analyst asked if anything has changed in the Jamestown area plant’s operational setup and how Das Gupta feels about the debt financing commitment for the Gigafactory. Das Gupta didn’t commit to a timeframe for receiving financing approvals, but said there has been interest from private lenders even while Electrovaya officials work to secure financing with government backing.

“On Jamestown, we have had multiple, in fact, we just received another term sheet from a private lender recently to fund this expansion,” Das Gupta said. “Our focus, though, is still to get the financing at a lower cost from a government-backed lender, who we are in advanced discussions with and have been in advanced discussions with for some time. We see some light at the tunnel at this point, though. We have regular conversations with this group who’s out of D.C. I’ll be in D.C. in a couple weeks as well to meet with them. So I think we’re making good progress, but we do have the alternatives on the private side as well, just at a higher cost.”

One reason private lenders may be interested in investing money into the Ellicott facility is Electrovaya’s growing financial stability. Revenue in the second quarter of the company’s financial year increased to $10.7 million, compared to the restated $8.5 million for the quarters ended March 31, 2024, and 2023 respectively, an increase of $2.2 million, or 26%. Operating profits increased to $700,000 through March 31, 2024, compared to a loss of $600,000 at the end of the same financial quarter in 2023 – an improvement of $1.4 million or 203%. Electrovaya officials expect revenue of $65 million to $75 million for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

In April, Electrovaya announced that it had established a supply agreement with SCPM, a 100% owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation that covers the supply of battery modules to leading Japanese construction equipment manufacturers. Electrovaya has also begun research and development efforts with two bus manufacturers for next-generation electric bus applications.

When the Ellicott facility will come online has been a moving target over the past several months. As of this week, company officials are pointing to sometime in mid-2025. That will give Electrovaya time to secure financing and convert the plant. Company officials said during their investor conference call in February that the Ellicott Gigafactory is key to meeting Electrovaya’s long-term revenue projections as new products come online. That hasn’t changed, according to this week’s conference call.

“The way we’re kind of operating right now is for fiscal ’25, we don’t need Jamestown to increase our revenue output,” said John Gibson, Electrovaya chief financial officer. “We’re only running one shift here in Ontario, we can increase that. So we really can get up to our total capacity here for 2025 without the need for Jamestown. In terms of what you mentioned with Jamestown becoming operational in 2026, we are still planning on having it open essentially and go live mid-2025. But what we really want to say is that that process isn’t required for any revenue targets that we set for 2025. Everything can come out of Mississauga. So we want to make sure we’ve got Jamestown up and running so that when capacity does increase, it’s ready to go. But from a revenue perspective, everything will come out of Canada.”