The weekly federal-spending brief. One email a Sunday. Free. No tracking.
The BuildoutBeta
Awards/PROJECT GRANT (B)

$50,000,000

Department of Energy·Department of Energy

to BRASKEM AMERICA, INC

energyexpiredONGOING · MOD OF 2025 CONTRACT
WORK BEGAN2025-01-01·LATEST ACTION2026-05-19·SOURCEUSASPENDING·SOURCE IDASST_NON_DEMS0000123_089
Award description

BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW (BIL) - RETROFIT AND EXPANSION PROJECT AT ULTRA HIGH MOLECULAR WEIGHT POLYETHYLENE PLANT: COMPLETING A FULL DOMESTIC SUPPLY CHAIN FOR LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES THE OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT IS TO RETROFIT AND EXPAND AN EXISTING ULTRA-HIGH MOLECULAR WEIGHT POLYETHYLENE (UHMWPE) UNIT TO MEET LITHIUM-ION BATTERY SEPARATOR (“LIBS”) QUALITY SPECIFICATIONS AND INCREASE THE OPERATING CAPACITY OF THE UNIT FROM 22,500 METRIC TONS PER YEAR TO 40,000 METRIC TONS PER YEAR, BOTH EXPANDING THE CAPACITY AND CAPABILITIES OF THE UNITED STATES IN ADVANCED BATTERY MANUFACTURING AND ENHANCING NATIONAL SECURITY BY REDUCING THE RELIANCE OF THE UNITED STATES ON IMPORTING UHMWPE FOR LIBS PRODUCTION FROM CHINA OR SOUTH KOREA. THIS PROJECT WILL PRESERVE HIGH-PAYING AMERICAN JOBS WITHOUT DISRUPTING THE LOCAL COMMUNITY OR ENVIRONMENT AND WILL SUPPORT LOCAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATHEMATICS (STEM) TRAINING AND EDUCATION INITIATIVES.

Verbatim from USAspending.gov. Capitalization, abbreviations, and codes are unchanged.

The Buildout's read

What the model surfaced from this award

Confidence: high
In plain English

Expand UHMWPE polyethylene plant to produce lithium-ion battery separators, growing annual capacity from 22,500 to 40,000 metric tons.

Sub-sectors
battery-manufacturingsupply-chain-securitylithium-ion-technology
Why this matters

Secures U.S. domestic battery separator supply chain, reducing dependence on China and South Korea for critical lithium-ion battery components.

Supply-chain signal

Secures upstream UHMWPE separator supply, enabling downstream domestic battery cell and EV manufacturers to reduce foreign sourcing.

U.S.–China competition angle

Directly builds U.S. capacity to compete with Chinese and South Korean battery separator makers, critical to securing full domestic EV supply chain.

Generated by award_classification v2.1.0 via claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 on 2026-06-10. Cost: $0.014784.

Period of performance
Start
2025-01-01
End
2025-12-19
Status
expired198 days ago
Sources

The Buildout does not edit federal records. Any inaccuracy reflects the upstream source; it will update here when corrected there.

$50.0M Department of Energy — The Buildout — The Buildout