Prussian blue, the cathode raw material in sodium-ion battery manufacturing, is now to be supplied by Czech producer Draslovka to US sodium-ion battery manufacturer Natron Energy. For now this is dubbed an R&D partnership agreement, but it will involve Draslovka’s “research, production and logistics capabilities on both sides of the Atlantic” – and the Czech company says it plans to expand production capacity at its chemical plant in Kolin. We’ve written about sodium-ion batteries a few times before, including about Natron Energy. The conclusions we reached then haven’t been overturned since – sodium-ion is still niche compared to lithium-ion for a reason, and that reason is simply cost. Sodium-ion’s three main angles are all niche – energy storage in China…