The new Redhill facility will expand Ceres’ manufacturing capacity significantly and this adds to its UK operations with its nearby Horsham facility remaining as the headquarters and technical centre. It will allow the company to initially supply the equivalent of 2 MW of fuel cells per year with the capacity to expand to I0 MW to meet demand.
Ceres’ strategy is to generate revenues through licensing its technology to its partners in the development phase, and generate royalties through manufacturing partners when full scale commercialisation is achieved, rather than be a large-scale manufacturer itself. The need for additional interim capacity has been driven by the increasing demand from the Company’s partner network of six major OEMs – which includes Nissan, Honda, Cummins, Weichai Power and Bosch.
Ceres is currently working on several applications with OEM partners including a range extender for electric buses with Weichai Power, small power plants with Bosch, EV range extenders with Nissan and data centre power with Cummins. These development projects alone require a major increase in manufacturing capacity, the company says. Ceres’ new facility will therefore meet significant existing demand for its SteelCell® technology from customers in the development phase and also provide capacity for the early stages of commercial product launch, whilst also serving as a proof of concept facility to demonstrate how rapid scale up and low-cost manufacturing is deliverable. This can then be duplicated on a larger scale by future manufacturing partners growing from 10 MW to 100 MW per year capacity.
