A new facility in County Durham is set to power up the UK’s battery ambitions.
The Advanced Materials Battery Industrialisation Centre (AMBIC) has opened at NETPark in Sedgefield, backed by a £12 million investment from UK Research and Innovation’s Faraday Battery Challenge, funded by Innovate UK.
The centre is a collaboration between the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and WMG at the University of Warwick.
Frank Millar, CEO at CPI, said: “This new facility provides the UK battery ecosystem with a vital capability — a place to scale and validate materials that could define the future of energy storage.
“It gives our partners greater speed and assurance as they translate their technology from laboratory to industrial scale.”
The new centre will focus on developing and scaling advanced battery materials, offering capabilities from gram-scale to more than 10 kilograms.
It aims to address challenges in the battery industry by combining advanced powder processing and analytical infrastructure with AI-driven data collection.
The facility will also offer high-throughput testing to support the development and validation of new materials.
Dr Keri Goodwin, chief technologist at CPI, said: “AMBIC is a key part of the UK’s industrial battery development toolkit.
“Whether you’re developing lithium-ion, solid-state, or emerging chemistries, our facility gives you the tools and expertise to scale faster — from powder to prototype.”
CPI’s team will provide support in material synthesis, formulation development, automated electrode coating, and performance optimisation.
The centre will offer open-access support to companies looking to de-risk and accelerate their scale-up processes.
