Battery manufacturer Powin filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday. The Oregon-based company said it has more than $300 million in debt.
The filing of Chapter 11 allows the company to continue operations while it restructures its obligations.
Powin manufactured a grid-scale battery using Chinese lithium iron-phosphate (LFP) cells. The company was looking for alternative domestic suppliers, but the supply chain was not mature enough, Jeff Waters, the company’s former CEO, told Bloomberg in April.
The company fired nearly 250 employees earlier this month, with only 85 remaining, with less than a fifth of that year remaining. In addition to the bankruptcy filing, Waters was replaced by Brian Crane, Powin’s Chief Project Officer.
Pawin was the survivor of the first clean technology boom over a decade ago. The company went private in 2018 and received $135 million in growth equity in 2022 from investors including Energy Impact Partner, GIC and Trilant Energy Partners. Recently, we have secured a $200 million revolving credit line from KKR.
In recent years, Powin has grown alongside the boom in grid-scale battery storage, ranking third in the US in terms of installation capacity and fourth in the world. The company said tariffs may have been rolling given China’s dependence on LFP cells, but it did not spur the sudden rise in debt.