EIB backs Resonac's A Coruña graphite plant

The European Investment Bank has signed an advisory agreement with Resonac Graphite Spain to support the company's project to produce synthetic graphite for electric vehicle batteries at its site in A Coruña. The engagement was formalised in late June 2026 and marks the most tangible signal yet that the company is positioning for a grant application under the EU Innovation Fund.

César Castiñeira Díaz, President and CEO of the Resonac Graphite Business Unit and President of Resonac Graphite Spain, is leading the push. He is the first non-Japanese executive to head one of Resonac's main business units, and has been building the case for European strategic autonomy in battery materials since the company received a provisional €2.7 million award under Spain's PERTE VEC IV programme in September 2025.

Resonac Graphite Spain produces graphite electrodes for electric arc furnace steelmaking and is now developing a pilot plant at the same A Coruña site to manufacture synthetic graphite for battery anodes. The company competes directly with SGL Carbon in Germany and Imerys in France, which announced a partnership with China's Shanshan New Material in October 2025 to develop European anode supply. Resonac's structural position rests on assets that any new entrant would need years to assemble: a municipal licence already in place, a specific 10,000 m² building identified at the former Alu Ibérica site, and a legacy industrial footprint in A Coruña that dates to the 1960s.

The company is also the first graphite electrode producer in the world to hold a verified Environmental Product Declaration, with its product carbon footprint methodology certified to ISO 14067:2018. That credential matters directly under the incoming EU Battery Passport, which will require documented lifecycle emissions for battery components sold into the European market.

The production process under development at the pilot plant is claimed to reduce the carbon footprint of graphite manufacturing by up to 90 percent compared with imported equivalents. China produced 97 percent of the world's battery anode materials by 2018, a concentration that European industrial policy is now actively working to reduce.

Under the advisory agreement, EIB Advisory specialists will work with the company on implementation strategy, financing structure, and market positioning. The support is funded through the Innovation Fund's project development assistance programme, which functions as the formal gateway to Innovation Fund grant applications. The Innovation Fund is expected to deploy around €40 billion across 2020 to 2030 in support of low-carbon industrial technologies.

"Las soluciones a los problemas a los que se enfrenta en estos momentos Europa deben ser fruto de una estrategia común entre la empresa y el Estado con valores compartidos." — César Castiñeira Díaz, President and CEO, Resonac Graphite Business Unit.

The advisory agreement does not itself commit EIB financing. It is preparatory, designed to make the project legible to institutional investors and eligible for Innovation Fund grant selection.

Galicia currently hosts the only operating graphite electrode plant in Spain. If the EIB advisory work translates into Innovation Fund selection and the pilot plant reaches commercial scale, A Coruña would become Europe's first vertically integrated synthetic graphite site for EV batteries, anchoring Galicia's reindustrialisation agenda in critical materials at the precise moment Spain's PERTE VEC programme is channelling state capital toward domestic battery supply chains.