Smart battery production pilot facility opens in UK

Software-accelerated battery pack developer IONETIC has revealed the first details of an all-new £5 million smart battery production pilot facility in the UK.

Called Arc Fab Pilot, the phase one battery pack manufacturing plant in Brackley is set to be brought online in 2025 and has been designed to significantly slash the time-to-market and development costs for electric vehicles (EVs) – reducing risk for automakers needing custom battery packs and providing a local approach to battery-pack manufacture in light of ongoing uncertainty affecting the EV sector.

The new 5000ft² facility will also serve as IONETIC’s global HQ and industrialization center, creating 30 high-skill jobs in its first phase. The £5 million Arc Fab Pilot facility will be fully operational by Q3 2025, having opened in Q4 2024, marking a key step in IONETIC’s mission to provide specialist OEMs – such as those producing trucks, buses, off-highway and commercial vehicles – with a rapid, cost-effective route to high-quality, customized EV battery packs.

“With EV adoption accelerating, OEMs need effective, flexible battery solutions,” says James Eaton, CEO and co-founder of IONETIC.  “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.”

With an initial investment of £5 million in 2025, Arc Fab Pilot underscores IONETIC’s commitment to making battery production faster, more flexible, and more affordable.

Unlike traditional production lines that are dedicated to one product type, the Arc Fab system can produce a variety of battery pack designs on a single line. IONETIC’s Arc technology stack can create optimized designs in days, a process that typically takes months, reducing upfront setup normally associated with custom EV battery pack development and production, slashing time-to-market by over 80%, enabling multi-million-dollar savings for OEMs. The Arc Fab Pilot Facility will use industry-leading automation hardware and integrated control systems from Rockwell Automation, as well as software such as the Emulate3D platform to build comprehensive digital twins of IONETIC’s production facilities.

IONETIC’s technology creates a new middle ground in the EV battery market, bridging the gap between off-the-shelf solutions with compromised performance, and costly custom solutions viable only for the world’s biggest OEMs. IONETIC makes custom battery packs affordable and accessible for specialist manufacturers, a sector that generates £7bn annually in the UK alone. “At a time when diversification in the EV battery pack market is more important than ever,” continues Eaton, “our mission is to reduce compromises for our partners and make custom battery production accessible, adaptable, and aligned with the future of mobility.”

IONETIC is committed to building sustainability into the core of its business. Both the pilot facility and future Arc Fab 1 are scheduled to use certified zero-carbon electricity, as part of IONETIC’s strategy to achieve net-zero operations by 2030. This approach allows IONETIC to meet the needs of smaller, low-volume OEMs looking for affordable custom solutions while keeping their environmental impact low.