The
UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) in Coventry, the UK’s national battery manufacturing scale-up facility, has secured £36 million in funding for a new Flexible Industrialisation Line (FIL) which will bridge the gap between UKBIC’s Volume Industrialisation Line (VIL) and existing kg-scale demonstrator lines that available elsewhere.
Construction of FIL is set to get underway in September of this year, with the line coming online during 2025, providing battery developers with a cost-effective route to market, enabling companies to move from R&D through to large-scale production, without having to take cell development outside of the UK. Once completed, FIL will be owned by UKBIC but operated jointly by UKBIC and the
University of Warwick’s WMG to facilitate effective transfer from research into industrialisation.
Funding for the new line is being provided by UK Research and Innovation, as part of the UK Government’s Faraday Battery Challenge, a £541 million investment programme which supports world-class scientific technology development and manufacturing scale-up capability for batteries in the UK. Since it opened in July 2021, UKBIC has successfully supported 24 advanced scale-up and industrialisation battery technology projects across numerous battery developers and end users, supported by its existing facilities and capabilities.
Dr Ahmad Mohsseni, UKBIC’s chief technology officer, who announced the initiative during a presentation at the
The Battery Show Europe in Stuttgart, Germany, said: “The construction of this new facility will be hugely significant for UKBIC and the UK battery industry. Once built, FIL will provide companies with a unique platform to enable them to get a foot on the scale-up ladder, from R&D through to volume manufacturing.”
Cost-effective route to commercialisationHe added: “Companies can find it incredibly difficult to source the volume of advanced materials required for early-scale trial and demonstration – the smaller the quantity needed, the better for executing early stage optimisation cycles and production trials. To date, we have mitigated the amount of material and time required for running our larger-scale manufacturing equipment for early customers through developing techniques such as half-width coating, running at slower speeds and half mix batches of slurry, but more is needed to support industry with a truly cost-effective route to commercialisation.”
Jeff Pratt, UKBIC’s managing director, said: “The scaling up of battery cells is notoriously difficult, time-intensive, and complex. When technology developers get to the point of trying to attract investors or customers, they are looking for high-quality control and industrial standards, which is a key reason for turning to UKBIC. The challenge is that they may have a significant programme of product and process developments to be completed before they can continue.
“Our specialist high-volume manufacturing equipment is perfect for those organisations in need of representative scale-up, but not necessarily for those organisations at an earlier technology readiness stage of their development. That is where FIL, once built, will come in.”
Professor David Greenwood, director for industrial engagement and CEO of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult at WMG, said: “The new FIL at UKBIC will fill the strategic gap between proof-of-concept cells at WMG and full-scale manufacturing on the UKBIC VIL. This new facility will be operated jointly by UKBIC and WMG so as to bring the best battery science and technology together with the best manufacturing knowledge, allowing companies to manufacture sample batches of many thousands of innovative cells, accelerating commercial development.”