Dutch solid-state battery maker acquires factory in Scotland

Dutch solid-state battery maker acquires factory in Scotland

Dutch startup LionVolt has acquired AMTE Energy’s battery cell manufacturing line in Scotland. It says it can use the belongings for pilot manufacturing of its 3D solid-state thin-film batteries.

Eindhoven-based startup LionVolt has accomplished the acquisition of AMTE Energy’s enterprise and belongings in Scotland, together with a battery cell manufacturing line in Thurso.

As a result of ongoing delays in securing the mandatory funds, AMTE Energy – an Oxfordshire-based developer and producer of lithium-ion and sodium-ion battery cells – went into administration in December. Nevertheless, FRP Advisory ran an accelerated mergers and acquisitions course and mentioned final week that it had accomplished the sale of the corporate enterprise and belongings to LionVolt.

The sale allows the battery manufacturing facility to be repurposed for producing LionVolt’s 3D expertise and consists of the switch of 20 jobs primarily based in Thurso. AMTE Energy’s remaining 15 staff in Milton, England, have been made redundant.

“The acquisition by LionVolt introduced the very best alternative to safe jobs and fulfill our statutory duties to collectors,” mentioned Richard Bloomfield, director of FRP Advisory and the joint administrator of AMTE Energy Plc. “The transaction follows an exhaustive gross sales course and seeks new funding. Critically, it preserves a lot of jobs and supplies a continuation of battery cell manufacturing in Scotland.”

For LionVolt, the acquisition of the battery manufacturing website brings “new complementary capabilities to the corporate for its subsequent section of progress.”

Sandeep Unnikrishnan, the CTO of LionVolt, described the transaction as a “dream state of affairs.”

“It helps us mature our modern 3D battery expertise faster by leveraging the manufacturing experience from the workforce in Scotland, thereby lowering time-to-market,” mentioned Unnikrishnan.

The acquisition comes scorching on the heels of LionVolt’s announcement that it’s constructing a pilot manufacturing line on the Brainport Industries Campus (BIC) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

LionVolt was spun off from the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) in 2020 with a mission to develop and scale its 3D solid-state thin-film battery expertise. The expertise is alleged to ship enhanced power density, superior cycle life, larger charging velocity, and enhanced security in comparison with standard lithium-ion batteries and be notably appropriate for wearables and electrical car functions.

LionVolt’s batteries are made by protecting billions of pillars with skinny layers of purposeful materials, making a 3D construction with giant floor space and quick distances between each battery electrode. Charging and discharging instances are decreased because the lithium-ions solely must journey a brief distance.

The producer mentioned this method allows the expertise to beat two main hurdles to its industrial rollout – the conformal coating of the complete battery stack and the event of scalable manufacturing instruments. The creation of the micropillar arrays is reportedly capable of cutting back the technological problem of conformal coating, and the open and common construction facilitates the deposition of consecutive layers.

LionVolt mentioned its battery configuration is retrofittable into present industrial codecs and a manufacturing line may be arranged in a really quick time. Nearly 80% of the availability chain wanted to construct a manufacturing line that may be sourced domestically, in keeping with the Dutch firm.

 

 

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