Australian flow battery maker Redflow is raising AUD18.1 million ($13.6m) to “scale up battery production and grow Australian and international sales”.
The Brisbane-based company said on 26 April it was raising the funds through a combination of a placement to new investors and a fully underwritten rights issue offered to all current shareholders.
Redflow said the cash total, before transaction costs, would comprise AUD7.5m through a placement to new investors and a further AUD10.6m through a fully underwritten non-renounceable entitlement offer to all current shareholders.
Chairman Brett Johnson (pictured) said Redflow was also “actively investigating strategic opportunities in China after being approached by several Chinese entities”. “China is forecast to be one of the largest single markets for energy storage, accounting for as much as 70% of the Asia-Pacific market,” he said.
“To date, shareholders have invested in development of the Redflow battery and in the creation of a manufacturing facility,” Johnson added. “We believe we are positioned now to transition from a research and development company into a fully operational manufacturing, sales, marketing and product support organisation.”
Redflow will invest the additional working capital in its growth strategy— which could potentially include working with manufacturing joint venture partners— in addition to raw materials, inventory and cost reduction.
Johnson said Redflow had made “significant progress” over the past six months since opening a wholly-owned battery stacks manufacturing plant in Thailand.
“We now have the ability to manufacture and supply quality batteries in predictable quantities,” Johnson said. “The current plan is to increase our manufacturing capacity in Thailand so we can manufacture as many as 90 complete batteries a month by June 2018 and, subject to demand, scale up production to as many as 250 batteries by December 2018.”
Redflow said it will stay focussed on selling its ZBM2 and ZCell zinc-bromine flow batteries through an authorised partner network in Australia and internationally to customers for telecommunications, commercial & industrial and high-value and off-grid residential energy storage applications.