A Norwegian battery materials company has told a Butte-Silver Bow board that Butte is now the only U.S. location it is considering if it expands operations to the United State, county officials say.

That doesn’t mean Cenate is coming but it is an encouraging development in Butte’s chances of landing a factory, the officials said. Cenate — pronounced Sin-NAH-tah — says such a factory would employ 100 to 250 people.

The company said in February that Butte was its “preferred location” for its first American factory. But Olav Leren Moen, chief strategy officer for Cenate, told The Montana Standard there was “still somebody working to convince us to locate elsewhere in the U.S.”

He told the board that oversees the Montana Connections Business Park’s tax-increment district on Oct. 3 that Butt

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