Lavle USA, a joint venture between the Japanese battery company 3DOM and integration services provider Ockerman Automation, established U.S. headquarters in Anacortes, Wash. The goal is to provide products and services to the defense, renewable energy and marine transportation markets, with a possible future move into boating.
Lavle is receiving a capital investment from 3DOM that is being reported as one of the largest private financings of a Washington-based company in 2018.
“We chose to headquarter Lavle in Anacortes not only because of its rich maritime history and as a maritime center of excellence, but also because the San Juan Islands are representative of the pristine natural environment Lavle wants to sustain,” Jason Nye, CEO of Lavle, said in a statement.
Nye has held positions with the State Department and in the private sector. “One of the early inspirations for creating Lavle came from initiatives I created between Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation that resulted in a memorandum of cooperation between the two. One of the areas of cooperation discussed was the electrification of marine vessels.”
The joint venture comes at a time when the marine transportation industry is trying to keep pace with the move toward electric vehicles in other industries.
