OneD site manager took a roundabout path

MOSES LAKE — Nick Kamerath didn’t set out to run a high-tech chemical plant, but here he is. 

“If you were a high-performing academic student … (you were expected to be) either a doctor or lawyer and I didn't really necessarily want to be either,” he said. “I got out of high school and started doing general studies, kind of eliminating things like ‘Well, I don't want to do that, don't want to do that.’ And as I wrapped up my associate’s in general studies, it kind of narrowed down to chemical engineering. I was riding the bus to Weber State University, and the bus the other direction went to the University of Utah. So I just switched sides of the street to go the other way.”

Kamerath is the Moses Lake site manager for OneD Battery Sciences, which recently produced its first batch of Sinanode, its silicon nanowire product to increase battery storage for electric vehicles. He moved to Moses Lake in June to take the reins at the plant on Road N.

A Utah native, Kamerath moved with his family to Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland, when he was 16, then moved back to Utah for college. In his junior year, he said, he was offered a chance to do a combined bachelor’s-master’s degree program, and also a job at a startup plant in Logan, Utah.

“The last part of my senior year and all the way through graduate school, I was 80 miles away from the university,” he said. “Somebody would go to my classes and videotape them, and then I'd go home and watch the classes that I missed that day. And every once in a while, I’d go down and take a test.”

During a summer trip home to see family in Vancouver, Kamerath met his wife, Mel. The two had actually gone to high school together, he said, but hadn’t met until then. They married the following summer and Mel joined him in Utah while he finished school. After Nick wrapped up his master’s, the two returned to Washington, where he got a job, they bought a house and they were expecting their first child, all within the first six months.

That job was at WaferTech, now called TSMC Washington, in Camas, just a hop upriver from Vancouver. The Portland area is sometimes called the Silicon Forest due to the density of high-tech companies, and Camas is on the edge of that forest. At WaferTech, Kamerath got his first taste of the semiconductor industry, which would serve him well down the road.

After four years at WaferTech, Kamerath moved on to the Leatherman Tool plant in Portland, just a short commute away, where he gained experience in manufacturing and management. But Portland was beginning to have troubles that drifted across the river to Vancouver, so the Kameraths headed to Kalama, a small town on the Columbia about 30 miles north, where Nick got a job at a plant that made chemicals for wood treatment, just in time for the pandemic to hit.

“We were actually super busy during COVID,” he said, because then everybody was home doing all of their home improvement work. We were the busiest we’d ever been, running 24/7. We couldn’t keep up with demand.”

Kamerath managed that facility until a recruiter sought him out last year about the position at OneD, which was just gearing up to build its plant in Moses Lake.

“It seemed like it had a lot of potential, getting into the EV market,” he said. “I’ll be honest, Moses Lake was not high on the list when we came and visited … It was a change of environment and culture and climate, and it’s an adjustment. I grew up in this (in Utah), but my wife’s from Vancouver, so I think it’s tougher for them.”

Kamerath came to Moses Lake first on his own, bought a bank-owned house, and set about fixing it up for the family to move into, which they did last week. The Kameraths have three kids now, he said, 15, 9 and 6 years old. Mel has taken to the town enthusiastically, he added.

“My wife’s the social butterfly of the relationship,” he said. “(She said) ‘I’m going to miss all my friends’ and I said ‘ You’ll have friends in the first weekend.’ I mean, she’s been here a couple of days and she’s already like ‘Oh, I made good friends with the neighbor, I made friends with that person.’ She’s already checked with a Girl Scout troop and wants to get involved there. She’s already out planting seeds and trying to get the kids into stuff.”

    Nick Kamerath speaks at the official groundbreaking for OneD Battery Sciences’ Moses Lake plant in November of 2023.