Battery pack developer Ionetic has announced plans for a £5 million production facility in Brackley, UK, scheduled to open in late 2024. The Arc Fab Pilot facility, which will serve as the company’s global headquarters, is expected to be fully operational by Q3 2025.
The 5000-square-foot plant aims to reduce development time and costs for EV manufacturers requiring custom battery packs. The facility will create 30 high-skill jobs in its first phase and will focus on serving specialist OEMs producing vehicles such as trucks, buses, and off-highway commercial vehicles.
Ionetic, founded in January 2022 by James Eaton and Dr. Monica Marinescu, plans to use the facility to manufacture various battery pack designs on a single production line. The company will utilize automation hardware and control systems from Rockwell Automation, including the Emulate3D platform for creating digital twins of production facilities.
“With EV adoption accelerating, OEMs need effective, flexible battery solutions,” said Eaton. “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.”
The company states its Arc technology stack can create optimized designs in days rather than months, potentially reducing time-to-market by over 80%. This approach targets the middle ground between off-the-shelf solutions and custom options typically only available to large manufacturers.
The facility is planned to operate using certified zero-carbon electricity, as part of Ionetic’s goal to achieve net-zero operations by 2030. The UK specialist vehicle manufacturing sector, which Ionetic aims to serve, currently generates £7 billion annually.
