Ilika reached an important milestone as Goliath solid-state battery tech advances – ICYMI
Ilika PLC (AIM:IKA, OTCQX:ILIKF) CEO Graeme Purdy spoke with Proactive about the company’s progress with its Goliath solid-state battery programme.
Purdy spoke about automation, prototype delivery, and steps toward commercial licensing.
Here we take a closer at look at the conversation.
Graeme, good to see you and congratulations on this latest milestone. Now that the Goliath pilot line’s fully operational, what’s your immediate plan for delivering the prototypes to customers?
Graeme Purdy: Well, I have to say, if you were here with us at Ilika headquarters today, Stephen, you would be very impressed to see it’s a real hive of activity down on the pilot line.
The guys are so excited about being given access to all this equipment and we are putting it to good use. We’ve got builds in progress. And it has really amplified our capability to be able to deliver larger quantities of these batteries.
Proactive: How does the automation in the Goliath line improve yield and consistency compared to the previous production methods? And why is this important for scaling up?
Graeme Purdy: Well, when we first started making our prototypes, there was actually quite a lot of manual intervention. And, you know, the problem with that is you end up with beautifully handcrafted individual batteries, which sometimes struggle to give you the degree of reproducibility that you need in order to progress with engineering designs of module and pack level.
So, what the automation really does is it takes out that human intervention, it takes out that variability that you get from operator to operator. And you just get the same results day in and day out.
And that’s really one of the absolute key deliverables that our customers are looking for us to put in front of them.
Proactive: How does completing this pilot line milestone bring Ilika closer to your licensing objectives and potential commercial partnerships?
Graeme Purdy: Well, one of the things that our customers do is that they take the batteries that we give them and they put them through a test and verification program. So, you know, they trust us, but they like to verify that data. And so when we’re able to give them larger batches of batteries for that verification, it basically ticks another box in the procurement approval process and gets them closer to the point where they can say, “Yep, we’re pretty confident about this technology.
It delivers what we’re looking for. Now let’s enter into their license agreement.”
Proactive: So what’s next on your roadmap for Goliath then, Graeme?
Graeme Purdy: Well, these batches of batteries that the guys are making as we sit here talking to each other will be put through our own verification program over the next month or so. And then they will be released towards the end of the year to our customers for them to start the development work that they need to do. So that’s really the next bit of news to look out for, is when we allow those batteries out the door.
Proactive: Look forward to more conversations in the near future then Graeme, thank you very much for sharing with us today.
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Ilika reached an important milestone as Goliath solid-state battery tech advances – ICYMI, source
