Flexible Industrialisation Line at UKBIC will enable scale up for battery developers

With £36m in funding, the new line is expected to bridge the gap between UKBIC’s existing Volume Industrialisation Line (VIL) and kilogramme scale demonstrator lines available elsewhere.

Construction of FIL is set to get underway in September of this year, with the equipment coming online during 2025.

According to UKBIC, the new line 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 and operated jointly by UKBIC and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG).

Funding for the new line is being provided by UK Research and Innovation as part of the UK government’s Faraday Battery Challenge, a £541m investment programme supporting technology development and manufacturing scale-up capability for batteries in the UK.

Tony Harper, director of the Faraday Battery Challenge, said: “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.