Ilika enters 16-month, £2.7m battery production scaling collaboration

9th Oct 2023 15:32

(Sharecast News) - Solid-state battery technology developer Ilika announced a 16-month, £2.7m collaborative programme named Project SiSTEM on Monday, aimed at scaling its 'Goliath' solid-state battery (SSB) pilot production capacity, with a significant support of £0.4m from the Automotive Transformation Fund (ATF).

The AIM-traded firm said the collaboration, launched on 1 October, would feature Mpac Group and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) and align concurrently with another initiative, Project HISTORY, announced earlier in the year.

It said Mpac, a global automation and packaging entity, would collaborate closely with Ilika in crafting, engineering, and initiating a 1.5MWh SSB assembly line specifically designed to supply Ilika's Goliath SSB prototype large-format pouch cells to automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and tier-1 suppliers.

The assembly line was expected to be fully functional at Ilika's facility by the end of the first half 2025.

Meanwhile, the UKBIC, located in Coventry, was set to accelerate the transition from laboratory-scale, promising battery technology to mass production.

The centre would build on the research and development from the BUS100 programme by executing physical trials, aiming to manufacture Ilika's SSB electrodes at a gigawatt-hour (GWh) scale.

Ilika said the ATF, formulated to back large-scale industrialisation, was primed to invest up to £850m in evolving a high-value, electrified automotive supply chain within the UK.

The fund would play a pivotal role in realising the objectives set in the UK government's 10-Point Plan for a green industrial revolution and its Transport Decarbonisation Plan.

"Project SiSTEM builds upon previous ATF support in Project BUS100, which found that with minor adaptations, Ilika's electrodes could, in principle, be produced in volume on the UKBIC lines," said chief executive officer Graeme Purdy.

"Project SiSTEM will undertake those physical trials, proving Ilika's technology can be successfully scaled."

Purdy said the company's collaboration with Mpac would see the development of a scaled SSB assembly line, which would be capable of delivering A-sample automotive pouch cells for testing in 2025.

"This is an important step in Ilika's roadmap, enabling us to engage closer with OEMs as we start to deliver SSB cells into their test programmes."

At 1455 BST, shares in Ilika were down 1.01% at 30.69p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.