£130m Battery Industrialisation Centre moves a step closer
The £130m UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) has moved a step closer to opening with the confirmation that the facility’s Module and Pack suite of specialist battery manufacturing equipment is now operational.
The Module and Pack assembly line is the first of UKBIC’s innovative battery manufacturing equipment – sourced and supplied from leading manufacturers across the globe – to have been installed and commissioned at the publicly funded ‘open access’ 18,500 sq m battery development facility in Coventry.
The assembly line enables customers to test and produce low volumes of cylindrical and pouch cell battery technology.
The facility features a state-of-the-art laser precision specialist welder for welding cells to busbars at industry relevant speeds and accuracy. In addition, the line has pioneering battery leak functionality, which allows leaks to be more easily discovered prior to full scale up, whilst the layout has space reserved to accommodate future customer requirements such as alternative joining technologies and plasma cleaning.
Although UKBIC’s cell making equipment is identical to that of emerging Gigafactories now under construction, UKBIC’s Module and Pack equipment mimics leading cutting-edge processes you would expect to find in high throughput battery assembly plants.
Ian Whiting, UKBIC’s commercial director, said: “We’re delighted to have our Module and Pack line up and running. This is the first part of the facility which customers can now use.
“Our unique, open-access facility allows organisations in the UK to prove whether their promising technologies can be manufactured at the required volume, speed, performance and cost to be commercially successful. Clients can bring their own employees in to work and be trained with us on the line. Customers can also integrate processes unique to their own products temporarily to our facility. And we can help them build ‘runner lines’ at UKBIC to enable them to prove higher throughput production in early stages whilst customers build their own production lines.”
UKBIC is a key part of the Faraday Battery Challenge, a Government programme to fast track the development of cost effective, high-performance, durable, safe, low-weight and recyclable batteries.
