ORBIA FLUOR & Energy Materials’ (Koura’s) story is one of American grit and tenacity. It wasn’t too long ago that the St. Gabriel plant faced the very real possibility that it would be downsized or shuttered. Instead, it is expanding to become the nation’s first domestic manufacturer of critical lithium-ion battery materials.
Louisiana native Erick Comeaux, Director – Operations, Growth, is proud of his company’s ability to pivot while also finding a way to keep the entirety of its workforce employed. An LSU graduate, Comeaux has spent 30 years working in the petrochemical industry. “The refrigerant we produce is being phased out,” he says. “Some companies would have just closed the facility and laid everyone off, but that would have had a tremendous impact on our workers, and the whole state of Louisiana for that matter.”
AT A GLANCE
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Instead, Orbia Fluor & Energy Materials took the bold step of entering a business they have supported for decades—the lithium-ion battery market—and chose to build two new grassroots production facilities to manufacture the chemicals that go into the batteries, with the help of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Once operational, one of the plants will produce enough lithium hexafluorophosphate to make more than a million electric vehicle (EV) batteries a year.
