Ilika PLC (AIM:IKA, OTCQX:ILIKF) CEO Graeme Purdy talked with Proactive about the company's recent milestones and strategic advancements. In this interview, Purdy highlights the key achievements of the year, starting with the success of Stereax, their miniature batteries for medical implants and industrial sensors. He discusses the significant licensing deal with Cirtec Medical in the US, which ensures the production and commercialization of Stereax.
Purdy also delves into the progress made with Goliath, their solid-state battery technology. Achieving lithium-ion energy density parity, Ilika is set to demonstrate its capability at a larger industrial scale. Moreover, Purdy mentions the ongoing validation of P1 batteries with tier-one customers and the collaborative projects aimed at enhancing their capabilities.
A key focus is the Cirtec deal, which Purdy sees as crucial for Stereax's market reach, given Cirtec's extensive network and manufacturing prowess in the medtech sector. Additionally, Purdy shares insights on the regulatory landscape's impact on energy transition technologies and Ilika’s positioning within this sector.
Investments in Ilika’s facilities, including upgraded equipment and enhanced production capacities, underscore the company's commitment to advancing solid-state battery technology. Purdy concludes by discussing future prospects and the collaborative £2.7 million program with Mpac Group (LSE:MPAC) plc and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre, aimed at building an automated assembly line for EV cells.
Stephen Gunnion: I'm joined by Ilika CEO Graeme Purdy. Graeme, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today, because you're out with your full-year results, and you reached a number of milestones over the year. Could you list some of them for us, please?
Graeme Purdy: Yeah, morning Stephen. It's been a fantastic year actually. When you look back and take stock of all of the milestones that we've hit, it's quite a list. So let's start briefly with Stereax. These are our miniature batteries for miniature medical implants and wireless industrial sensors. We started the year in style really. We shipped some of our M300 products, which is our minimum viable product (MVP), out to customers. And then we struck a deal with Cirtec Medical in the US, a ten-year licensing deal to transfer the Stereax production technology to them and to have a licensing agreement with them. We then packed up the equipment that we'd used to make the M300 at our facility in the UK and sent it out to the Cirtec facility in the US. That's a large, thin film facility that they've got in Lowell, Massachusetts. They've installed that equipment now, and that whole installation is substantially complete. We're just about to kick off the engineering lots that are at the start of the qualification process and gearing up for closer collaboration on marketing with a view to start commercial sales in 2025.
And then, on the other hand, with Goliath, we hit some great technology development milestones in Q4 of 2023. The D4 development point, which was a design freeze, allowed us to then focus on the batch production of the first round of P1 prototypes. We hit lithium-ion energy density parity, which means that our prototype solid-state batteries have got the same energy density as incumbent lithium-ion. And also, you know, some great progress with the installation of equipment at our facility to be able to scale up and demonstrate the solid-state battery production process that we've invented at a larger scale that is industrially relevant, just to show our customers that we really can make these solid-state batteries using processes that can be transferred onto a much larger scale.
Stephen Gunnion: Graeme, you recently announced the delivery of P1 batteries to a tier one. So that's following your year-end. What will they do with these and what will your next development steps be?
Graeme Purdy: Well, it's all about validation really, isn't it? So, you know, we've taken that batch of P1 cells. Of course, we've done extensive testing in-house and then when we were happy that we were getting reproducibility and consistency, we offered small batches of those to customers for their own evaluation. Actually, there's been a couple of announcements in the past couple of weeks. On the one hand, we've started a program with one customer who sponsored us to do some further evaluation at our own facility under their supervision because, you know, they liked the specialist capabilities that we've got at Ilika for testing batteries. And then, on the other hand, we've actually shipped, as you say, a batch of batteries through to a customer for them to do their own validation in their own facilities. So, you know, moving ahead nicely with those customer interactions.
Stephen Gunnion: How does this Cirtec deal underpin commercialisation opportunities for Stereax, Graeme?
Graeme Purdy: Yeah. Well, you know, the Cirtec Medical deal is our chosen route to market for Stereax. You know, they're a big tier-one US-headquartered organisation with substantial multi-million turnover and a great network of relationships with OEMs in the medtech sector. They do substantial manufacturing on an outsourced basis for OEM products. And so we believe that they are a really great partner to take Stereax, integrate it into their own subassemblies and products, and take that to market for us over the coming years.
Stephen Gunnion: With the new governments in place, Graeme, what are your thoughts on what this might mean for the sector more broadly?
Graeme Purdy: I think that there is very much a regulatory-driven opportunity here for, you know, energy transition technologies like ours. I think we will see a bit of a resurgence in the sector in the UK. It's gone through a bit of a lull over the past 24 months, but we're starting to see an uptick and a sort of rejuvenation of interest in pushing through that agenda. And, you know, I think Ilika is an absolutely key player, certainly in the UK and in Europe, if not worldwide, for the development of solid-state batteries, which underpin, in particular, the EV transition that we're going through.
Stephen Gunnion: Just finally, Graeme, what has Ilika done to improve its own capabilities?
Graeme Purdy: Well, we've had a lot of investment actually in our facilities. We've got some ongoing at the moment enabled by the recent successful equity placing that we've done. So we are upgrading our dry room for handling advanced materials for the EV program. And also we've installed some larger-scale equipment at our facilities near Southampton in the UK for roll-to-roll coating that's now fully commissioned. We're actually capable of making much larger quantities, which were required for the production of P1 prototypes. And then the program that's still rolling, and I'm very excited about actually, because it will allow us to upgrade assembly capacity to about 1.5MW hours per year, is the program that we're doing together with Mpac Group plc and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC), which is actually funded by the Automotive Transformation Fund. And that's what we call our system project, which is a £2.7 million program and that's effectively to build an automated assembly line to make EV cells.