UKBIC backs £36m battery scale up line
The UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) has secured £36 million for a Flexible Industrialisation Line (FIL) to help battery makers scale up production.
The new line will bridge the gap between UKBIC’s Volume Industrialisation Line (VIL) and existing kilogramme scale demonstrator lines available elsewhere.
Construction of the new flexible line is set to get underway in September of this year, with the equipment coming online during 2025.
This comes as Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is reported to be close to announcing a deal to build a battery gigafactory in the south west of the UK with £500m of support.
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The UKBIC line, based near Birmingham, will provide 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 WMG (the University of Warwick’s Manufacturing Group) to boost the transfer from research into industrialisation.
“The new Flexible Industrialisation Line at UKBIC fills the strategic gap between Proof-of-Concept cells at WMG and full-scale manufacturing on the UKBIC Volume Industrialisation Line. 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,” said Professor David Greenwood, Director for Industrial Engagement and CEO of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult at WMG.
Funding is part of the Faraday Battery Challenge which is restructuring to have more industrial focus in key areas. UKBIC has supported 24 advanced scale up and industrialisation battery technology projects since it opened in July 2021 across numerous battery developers and end users.
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“The construction of this new facility will be hugely significant for UKBIC and the UK battery industry. Once built, this new Flexible Industrial Line, will provide companies with a unique platform to enable them to get a foot on the scale-up ladder, from Research & Development through to volume manufacturing,” said Dr Ahmad Mohsseni, UKBIC’s Chief Technology Officer.
“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,” he said.
Tony Harper, Director of the Faraday Battery Challenge added “When customers leave laboratories or pilot lines for product development, there is still a huge amount of process iteration required before cells can be successfully scaled at the cost, quality, and performance required for giga-scale production.
“UKBIC’s existing Volume Industrialisation Line is ideally placed for the later stages of manufacturing process to validate that product can be made in volumes of tens of thousands and above. This is where it becomes cost-effective and representative of an industrial plant run, and therefore a vital part of the commercialisation process.
The gap for the UK is in early production quantities, between the low hundreds and low thousands of cells, which is where our new line will come in.”
Jeff Pratt, UKBIC’s Managing Director, added: “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.”
“The battery industry will be essential in helping us grow the green economy of the future, and this funding secured by the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre forms part of the Government’s landmark support for the industry so far. The Centre’s new Flexible Industrialisation Line will provide a significant boost to both research and production for UK battery companies, helping to drive forward our ambition to make the UK a battery science superpower,” said UK Minister for Industry and Economic Security, Nusrat Ghani.
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