Ilika plc (LON:IKA) Chief Executive Officer Graeme Purdy caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss marking full operational capability at its Goliath solid-state battery pilot facility.
Q1: Graeme, could you just remind us why Ilika needs to operate a pilot line for its Goliath product development?
A1: Ilika’s business model is effectively a licensing model so we mature our technology to the point where we can give samples of our product and also demonstrate the process to our customers. Our customers want comfort that we’re able to make these batches of products reproducibly on an automated pilot line so they’re safe in the knowledge that they can then take our offering and scale it to the next level of industrial production.
So, therefore, they often come and visit the pilot line, see it actually being operated and having a pilot line that is complete in the way that we’ve got it gives our customers a great deal of comfort so they can move to the next step of licensing.
Q2: So, what was the final piece of the pilot line that Ilika’s just commissioned?
A2: The piece that we’ve just finished is the assembly piece.
In a nutshell, the way that our Goliath batteries are made is that we start with a powder of the functional material. We then make that into a slurry so mix the powder with solvents. We then coat that onto a web or the foil that is used to support the electrodes, and we then notch those electrodes into the shape of our batteries. We then assemble those notched electrodes into, in our case, a pouch that’s then sealed and the batteries formed and tested.
So, we’ve had the other parts of the pilot line already for some time now and the piece that we’ve just completed was the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle was the assembly of the pouch cells.
Q3: Is the roll-to-roll coating line part of this pilot capability?
A3: Absolutely. So, we’ve talked about that roll-to-roll coating in previous press releases and that’s that coating bit of the process that I was just describing. We use a roll-to-roll coating because it’s a very efficient and industrially representative coating technology.
So, we’ve got a pilot line coater at our facility, and we’ve also accessed actually the much larger coater at UKBIC, the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre.
Q4: How many batteries could it produce on the pilot line?
A4: We have 1.5 megawatt hours of capacity on our pilot line and of course, the answer to your question depends on what is the capacity of the individual cells that we would manufacture.
Of course, we don’t operate the pilot line 24-7 but we are capable of manufacturing thousands of batteries on this pilot line that we’ve got in place. So, more than enough to be able to run our test and validation programme, as well as supply batteries to interested licensees.
Q5: How would Ilika scale up further, do you think?
A5: Well, we’ll scale up further in collaboration with our licensing partners so say that a Gigafactory operator would like to take our technology and transfer it into their facility, they would invest in the capability to make what the automotive industry calls B samples and then C samples.
So, these are exactly the same batteries that we can make on our pilot line but actually made in larger quantities on industrially ready equipment and so that next bit of the scale up is very much through partnership.
