Ilika Plc (LON:IKA) Chief Executive Officer Graeme Purdy caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss the breakthrough in manufacturing qualification for Stereax micro batteries and outlines the next steps as production and customer deliveries approach.
Q1: Graeme, could you just explain for us why are Stereax micro-batteries revolutionary?
A1: I think it boils down to their unique characteristics. Stereax micro-batteries are designed so that they are as miniaturised as possible for the amount of energy that they contain. So, they’ve got a high volumetric and gravimetric energy density so basically it makes them compact batteries.
On top of that they deliver a significant current, i.e. the amount of power, for their size, and this is really important for a lot of these electroceutical applications that Stereax is designed for. A lot of them rely on data transfer and you need to be able to pull a certain current from the battery to be able to drive the bluetooth chip that’s typically used for transferring the data. So, so if you’ve got a battery that packs a decent punch for its size, then you can power all of that electronics very effectively.
Q2: Could you explain a little more about what you mean by the manufacturing qualification now being complete?
A: That’s basically what we’ve been up to for the past six months or so across at the Cirtec facility in Lowell in Massachusetts, in the US. We completed the installation of the equipment at the turn of the year and we’ve been running the equipment to be able to make batteries for testing and qualification, as we say here.
So effectively, we take batches of these batteries and then we characterise them, we analyse them, and we test their characteristics, when we’re happy with that, we declare that we have completed manufacturing qualification.
Effectively, that means that we have put our batteries through that manufacturing process and we’re now at a point where we’re saying, right, we can commence production.
Q3: So, if production’s commenced, does that mean then consumer deliveries are imminent?
A3: Well, depends on your definition of imminent. We are planning to commence customer deliveries within this calendar year, probably towards the end of the calendar year. Actually, that is just a reflection of the amount of time that it takes us to put the wafers that we actually start the manufacturing process with through that whole process, put the batteries together, i.e. stack them, and then test them. We have to run a minimum test programme before we release the batteries to our customers.
All of that will take us up to the end of the year.
Q4: Are you still convinced that the partnership with Cirtec Medical was the right choice for Ilika?
A4: Absolutely. We searched long and hard for an appropriate partner.
The characteristics that we were looking for in a manufacturing partner for Stereax were they had to be US-based because we are trying to ensure that the supply chain is short and that actually we are close to the medical device OEMs that are planning to use this particular technology. You’ll remember that we’ve released data in the past demonstrating that the majority of our commercial opportunities are actually based in the US.
Secondly, we wanted an organisation that had a complementary business model to ours and Cirtec is a very well-established manufacturing partner. As a result, they were very open to this licensing asset-light model that we’ve got at Ilika where they would basically take a licence to our technology, we would transfer it to their facility, and they would be responsible for the execution of the manufacturing activities.
Thirdly, of course, they have got a fantastic business development team that is very energetic, very well connected and we wanted to add momentum to our commercial pipeline.
Q5: You touched on this earlier, but what can we expect to hear about next relating to Stereax?
A5: With this announcement, it fired the starting pistol on the manufacturing process. Clearly, as I explained a few minutes ago, we’ve got to put these batteries through testing and then commence customer delivery. So, it’s really some news around that test progress, making sure that they do what they say on the tin in the first batches that get released and then putting them in the hands of customers.
So, that’s the sort of news flow you can expect over the next few months.
