Manufacturing Today Issue - 221 February 2024 | Page 101

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Battery Factory be a part of the innovation process , as the industries that we serve work out the right applications for our product . It ’ s actually a lot of fun ,” John enthuses .
Battery cell production is no small-scale operation , as John details : “ Our initial two by 2GWh manufacturing lines are very large industrial units ; they are almost two thousand feet long . In the US , about the only comparable is the old paper mills from the ’ 50s to ’ 70s . The buildings are long and thin , and the inside is all open plan with lots of access space around the equipment , which includes high end process automation and is manned by a highly skilled workforce . It ’ s not necessarily complicated , just different to what people are used to in the manufacturing industry in the US today . Each machine costs around $ 100 million , to give you an idea .
“ There are around eight or nine main machine components in our manufacturing process . The early part is the chemical mixing , where we bring all the raw materials together and blend them . Once the mixture is wellbalanced , we move on to create the electrolyte solutions . Within that , there ’ s a variety of complex chemical reactions happening .
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