The phase one battery pack manufacturing plant in Brackley is set to be brought online in 2025 and has been designed to significantly slash the time-to-market and development costs for electric vehicles – reducing risk for automakers needing custom battery packs and providing a local approach to battery-pack manufacture in light of ongoing uncertainty affecting the EV sector.
The new 5000-sq-ft facility will also serve as Ionetic’s global HQ and industrialisation centre, creating 30 high-skill jobs in its first phase. The £5 million Arc Fab Pilot facility will be fully-operational by Q3 2025, having opened in Q4 2024, marking a key step in Ionetic’s mission to provide specialist OEMs – such as those producing trucks, buses, off-highway and commercial vehicles – with a rapid, cost-effective route to high-quality, customised EV battery packs.
“With EV adoption accelerating, OEMs need effective, flexible battery solutions” said James Eaton, CEO and Co-Founder of Ionetic. “By embedding agility into the core of our production model, we’re removing the most significant barriers to custom EV battery production; cost, time, risk and scalability. Arc Fab Pilot will be the first step towards unleashing the potential of our Arc technology stack, allowing us to produce custom battery packs at a speed and price point that the current market simply doesn’t allow for, from right here in the UK.”
Unlike traditional production lines that are dedicated to one product type, the Arc Fab system can produce a variety of battery pack designs on a single line. Ionetic’s Arc technology stack can create optimised designs in days, a process that typically takes months, reducing upfront setup normally associated with custom EV battery pack development and production, slashing time-to-market by over 80 percent, enabling multi-million-dollar savings for OEMs. The Arc Fab Pilot Facility will use industry-leading automation hardware and integrated control systems from Rockwell Automation, as well as software such as Emulate3D platform to build comprehensive digital twins of Ionetic’s production facilities.
Ionetic’s technology creates a new middle ground in the EV battery market, bridging the gap between off-the-shelf solutions with compromised performance, and costly custom solutions viable only for the world’s biggest OEMs. Ionetic makes custom battery packs affordable and accessible for specialist manufacturers, a sector that generates £7 billion annually in the UK alone.
“At a time when diversification in the EV battery pack market is more important than ever, our mission is to reduce compromises for our partners and make custom battery production accessible, adaptable, and aligned with the future of mobility” added Mr Eaton.
Both the pilot facility and the future Arc Fab 1 will use certified zero-carbon electricity, as part of Ionetic’s strategy to achieve net-zero operations by 2030. This approach allows the company to meet the needs of smaller, low-volume OEMs looking for affordable custom solutions while keeping their environmental impact low.
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