I also see this as a ‘tell’ that the battery and energy storage industry is about to push hard to pivot to solid state batteries as soon as possible. Solid state manufacturing facilities designed from the ground up may be much more profitable than modifying old wet chemistry manufacturing lines to solid state manufacturing lines. This one concept may flesh out as companies vying for industry partners for their product runs of solid state cells over wet or slurry chemistry cells, kind of a battle between VHS vs Beta of days gone by. The LGES plant is said to be a total $5.5 billion dollar project with a total capacity of 53GWh of cells per year, both LFP BESS unit pouch batteries and 46xx cylindrical cells of some NMC chemistry for vehicles. KORE is in the unenviable position of pivoting to a different battery chemistry or staying out of the business for another say 5 years to see what happens to solid state cells and chemistries.

KORE may be telegraphing an industry pivot to the BIGs. BIG debt, BIG risks, BIG rewards or BIG failures. The final consideration is go BIG or go home.