UKBIC - powering the UK Battery sector from Baginton

The West Midlands has for a long time been at the heart of the UK automotive industry – integral to that has been the emergence of Coventry & Warwickshire as a centre of excellence in battery technology, research, and development.  

Warwickshire is home to the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC), the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), WMG at the University of Warwick, and companies such as Tata, JLR, and Aston Martin. It’s also home to Green Park in Coventry which has outline planning permission for a Gigafactory. 

The UKBIC is the national manufacturing battery development facility, providing manufacturing scale-up and skills for the battery sector. The purpose-built facility, in Baginton on the edge of Coventry Airport, is where businesses come to develop their battery manufacturing processes at the scale they need to move to industrial production. It's also where those working in the industry can develop new skills by joining UKBIC on the production line, learning from its specialist teams. 

Created with an initial investment of £130m, an additional £74m from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) was announced last year to enhance and expand the facility. The new investments are due to come on line over the coming year. 

A new Flexible Pilot Line is now being installed to bridge the gap between UKBIC’s larger existing scale production line and small-scale demonstrator lines available elsewhere. The facility, which opened in 2021, can be accessed by organisations with existing or new battery technology, or those companies looking at entering the industry.  The flexible facilities are designed so that several users can run projects at the same time in dedicated and security-controlled discrete areas. What makes it special, is that the facility doesn’t take a share in any customer Intellectual Property (IP) developed. 

UKBIC’s construction was originally part-funded through the West Midlands Combined Authority and was delivered through a consortium of Coventry City Council, WMG, at the University of Warwick, and the now dissolved Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership. Part of the £610m Faraday Battery Challenge, the programme is delivering a research and innovation programme that covers "Lab to Factory" development, cutting-edge research, national scale-up infrastructure, and skills and training. 

New developments to come online 

UKBIC’s innovative Flexible Pilot Line (or FPL) will bridge the gap between the facility’s existing Industrial Scale-up Line (ISL) and smaller, kilogram scale demonstrators available elsewhere. Coming in 2025, the new specialist line will provide developers with a more cost-efficient route to market, helping them move from research and development to large-scale production in more manageable steps.  

The new Battery Development Laboratory is due to be operational later this year and will boost UKBIC’s capabilities in key areas of battery material characterisation, cell analysis, and forensic activities to support manufacturing development. The enhanced laboratory will specialise in the characterisation of raw materials, slurries, coated electrodes, and finished cells, and will also have processing, electrochemistry, forensics and CT scanning capabilities. 

UKBIC is also building an innovative flexible clean room space, the Clean and Dry Zone (CDZ), which will also be on line later this year. The research and development zones will offer flexible clean room spaces, providing controlled conditions for equipment testing, temporary equipment installation for manufacturing work or other research and development projects. The CDZ features individually controlled rooms, each set from -40°C to ambient dew point on a zonal basis, allowing a controlled environment from room to room. 

Also coming later this year is an area dedicated to Cell Characterisation. The new capability will be housed inside a 135m2 air-conditioned unit inside our existing formation ageing and testing area.  

Supporting SMEs on their scaleup journey 

In May 2024, UKRI funded small and medium sized (SME) battery developers to the tune of £1.5 million to enable them to work at UKBIC.  

The winners of the second SME Credit competition will each be given the chance to scale-up their projects as they move from technological potential towards commercial capability. In addition, the projects will further enable UK competitiveness across the battery value chain by: 

• supporting SME research and development for the scale-up of battery technologies within the UK
• helping demonstrate technologies at suitable scales to customers
• move UK battery innovations from technological potential towards commercial capability
• develop and secure material and manufacturing supply chains for battery technologies in the UK

This latest funding builds on an earlier SME Credit competition launched in 2023.  

The skills challenge 

By 2040, the Faraday Institution estimates that the battery industry could support 170,000 jobs nationally in the automotive industry and a further 100,000 jobs in battery manufacturing and the wider battery supply chain. Significant reskilling and upskilling programmes will be needed to cater for the 35,000 jobs in gigafactories and 65,000 jobs in the battery supply chain that could be created. 

Delivering training at UKBIC 

UKBIC delivers specialist skills and practical training to the wider industry. Companies can now send their employees to work with UKBIC and learn first-hand from the organisation’s team of specialist battery manufacturing trainers. The company has already delivered comprehensive training with several European and US battery developers.  

The company’s main public access course is a 2-day Introduction to battery manufacturing, which can be free to employees of companies located in the county. 

The course is designed to provide a basic introduction to battery manufacture and cover in detail how to develop and create battery technologies. It will also give a flavour of what it’s like to experience life at a battery manufacturing facility. The next course dates are September 22 and 23. 

UKBIC is part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded Electrification Skills Network (ESN). Its purpose is to create a comprehensive framework for electrification skills in the UK. Other key partners locally in this initiative include Coventry University, Enginuity, the University of Warwick, and the Electric Revolution Skills Hub. ESN aims to bridge the gap between employers, accrediting organisations, and skills providers. 

Any company wishing to find out about how you can get involved, should go to https://www.ukbic.co.uk/contact