- The Companies have signed a purchase contract for a lithium-ion battery pilot production line in Voderady, Slovakia
- The 45MWh pilot production line will be designed, manufactured, and assembled by Lead and is flexible in chemistry, cell sizes and format
- The pilot line should produce its first batteries by the end of 2022
Lead and InoBat Auto (“InoBat”), European battery technology and manufacturing companyhave signed a purchase contract for a lithium-ion battery production line in Voderady, Slovakia. Lead will be the sole equipment supplier for the pilot phase of the project and will design, manufacture, and assemble a customized turnkey solution of lithium-ion batteries for InoBat. The 45MWh pilot line should produce the first batteries by the end of 2022.
InoBat is a European based battery manufacturer with a battery research and development facility and pilot line under development in Slovakia. InoBat is backed by a strong consortium of investors and technology companies, including strategic investors and partners such as Rio Tinto, CEZ, Matador, AEN, MSM Group, and Across. InoBat Auto was also approved for grant financing under the EU sponsored programme, Important Projects for Common European Interest, and already received a grant from the Slovak Government.
Marian Bocek, Chief Executive Officer of InoBat Auto said: “Wuxi Lead is the world’s leading manufacturer of new energy equipment. This purchase contract represents another important technological milestone in realization of the first phase of our project in Voderady. Wuxi Lead’s flexibility in chemistry, cell size and format of the batteries provides an important advantage to us as our aim is to provide premium electric batteries custom-designed to meet the specific requirements of our customers.”
The pouch line solution provided by Lead for InoBat Auto adopts the leading high-speed stacking technology allowing for efficient and precise production. At the same time, the line is capable of fast changeovers of toolkits, enabling flexibility in cell formats and sizes.
The contract covers the pilot phase of the project in Voderady, Slovakia, which focuses on rapidly developing the next generation of customized batteries. This R&D centre and a pilot line will identify the optimum cell chemistries to meet the exact requirements of any vehicle maker or manufacturer according to their needs. In the next phases of the project, InoBat will focus on a manufacturing scale-up through a number of gigafactories planned globally.