Bardan Cells visited the £130 million UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) in Coventry this week. The pioneering 20,000 square metre government funded manufacturing facility allows flexible testing and commercial production of a wide variety of cell formats and chemistries. Their goal is to help scale-up battery manufacturing and facilitate upskilling in the battery sector.
Our UK partner AMTE Power is a foundation user of the facility and has undertaken cell production for their clients at the centre. UKBIC currently employs 86 people, including battery technicians, engineers, and consultants, with plans for that number to reach 100 to support future project partnerships with industry and research organisations.
“I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to visit the UKBIC today. It’s been the pinnacle of my four-week fact-finding mission to Europe so far. It seems that the UK Government spared no expenses in laying the foundations for a carefully architected battery manufacturing facility, to encourage innovations and new battery chemistries, cell, module, and pack designs for the 2020’s. You could almost say that they had 20-20 vision for the growth industries of this decade: EVs and Energy Storage.” Simon Chan, Technical Director, Bardan Cells
Simon Chan, Cameron Edwards, Colleen Yates, John Fox and Gwen Cohen visiting UKBIC UKBIC can be used by any organisation working on batteries for electric vehicles, rail, aerospace, static energy storage, and industrial and domestic equipment, amongst others. Their facility enables organisations to test whether their advanced technologies can be scaled-up successfully before committing to the huge investment required for mass production. The process runs from cell materials and electrode, through to battery modules and packs, and can be manufactured at the required volume, speed, performance, and cost to be commercially successful. Source
UKBIC also help build bespoke production lines at the facility, in collaboration with organisations like Bardan Cells who are currently sourcing their own production lines and setting up their microfactory in Perth, Western Australian. Bardan aim to supply the Australian market with locally made cells by 2023.