Last Friday 15 July 2022 marked 12 months since the official opening of the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre – a manufacturing research facility supporting the nation’s journey towards a greener future in battery technology.
The UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) is a £130 million national battery manufacturing scale-up facility which provides skills for the growing battery sector.
The specialist manufacturing research facility celebrates its first anniversary today (Friday 15 July), marking 12 months since UKBIC was officially opened by the British Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP.
During his visit, the Prime Minister described the facility as a ”beacon of innovation and ingenuity- shining the way for a brighter, greener future for the battery sector in the UK.”
UKBIC is key in supporting the UK’s development of battery technology and developing skills for the transition to a greener future, supporting the wider national electrification agenda.
It plays a key role in the UK Government’s Faraday Battery Challenge (FBC), a national UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) led programme to bring together research, development and scale-up, including supply chain and manufacturing development, in order to help organisations seize opportunities presented by the move to a low carbon economy.
Located in Coventry, the publicly funded facility welcomes manufacturers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and educators, and can be accessed by any organisation scaling up existing or new battery technology towards commercialisation.
The facility has more than £60 million worth of specialist industrial-rate manufacturing equipment installed for the benefit of UK industry, who can use it to develop their technologies and workforce towards volume production. It employs a team of more than 100 engineers, technicians and back- office staff, which in turn will help to develop and grow UK battery production skills and knowledge for the industry.
Since first opening its doors in 2021, the Gigafactory-relevant facility, has already played a crucial role in supporting some low carbon projects that are set to propel the UK’s path to Net Zero by 2050.
Through industrial collaboration, UKBIC has enabled acceleration of opportunities for the most promising mid-stage research and development activities to accelerate scale-up and commercial exploitation.
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