After the gigafactory rush, battery machinery manufacturers are returning their focus on smaller-scale operations, whilst also offering more one-stop-shop systems, writes James Snodgrass.
A year ago, the battery machinery market was still being discussed largely in terms of gigafactory scale: bigger lines, faster pace of production, more gigawatt-hours. That is still true, but the past 12 months suggest the competitive frontier has moved. Equipment makers are now trying to sell not just throughput, but a more tightly engineered mix of energy efficiency, footprint reduction, digital process control, defect detection and flexibility for new chemistries. In other words, the conversation is shifting from “how fast can you build cells?” to “how controllably can you build good cells?”
That change is visible across the production chain. In turnkey manufacturing, suppliers are increasingly bundling more process steps into integrated lines, while also claiming major reductions in floor space, energy consumption and downtime. On the electrode side, coaters and slurry specialists are focusing on digitalisation, dry processing and higher process stability. In cell assembly, automation suppliers are targeting faster stacking, winding and handling for a widening range of form factors. And in formation, test and inspection, the emphasis is moving toward contamination control, nanohm-level weld measurement, inline traceability and smarter grading.
There is also a geographical angle at play. Chinese suppliers remain aggressive in full-line offerings and global expansion. Japanese and Korean groups retain strength in precision coating, winding and assembly. European companies are leaning into factory engineering, energy reduction and modularisation. And the US, while less crowded in turnkey lithium-ion equipment, remains important in lead battery machinery and in adjacent segments such as separator production and test systems.
Turnkey battery manufacturing machinery
Among the big full-line players, Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment (LEAD) is relatively young but Reuters reported in February that the company was raising capital in Hong Kong to fund global expansion, while its own marketing materials show that it now offers full-life-cycle support spanning electrode manufacture, cell making, formation, cycle testing and inspection. Over the past year LEAD has also introduced next-generation processes, including launching a high-speed dry coating system in July 2025 and promoting whole-line solutions for all-solid-state batteries. Its own predictive health management system claims lower maintenance costs and less unplanned downtime, which reflects a broader industry trend: lines are becoming software products as much as hardware ones.
Yinghe Technology is making a similar vertical integration, but with more emphasis on modular equipment within this integrated line-up. The company’s website now groups its products into coating and calendering, cell production, cutting and stacking, assembly lines and separate wet- and dry-process solid-state battery platforms. In September 2025 it announced an ultra-high-speed multi-station notching and stacking machine running at up to 0.1 seconds per piece (below), and in August 2025 said it was supporting a global lithium battery maker’s European expansion. This is the logic of the current market: sell the line, but make sure each tool inside it can also be marketed as a boon to productivity in its own right.
Dürr, meanwhile, has taken a branded approach to its integration. Working with GROB, it used Battery Show Europe 2025 and Battery Show North America 2025 to present a “concept factory” for lithium-ion cells that it says cuts production space by 50% and energy consumption by 70%.
Now, previously separate process tools have been united under the “X.Cellify” name, covering electrode coating and electrolyte filling. More than a mere marketing exercise, this reflects the way plant builders are presenting themselves as architects of whole production systems rather than suppliers of isolated machines.
Andritz has strengthened its position in the tail end of the line. In January this year it announced that a 1.5GW mass formation line supplied by Andritz Schuler had gone into operation for a major battery producer in southern Germany, serving a well-known German OEM. Formation was once the unglamorous tail-end of cell production; it is now becoming a selling point because it remains energy-intensive, capital-heavy and quality-critical.
Andritz Sovema is also embracing a modular approach in lead-acid battery assembly. As we reported in April, its new concept breaks lead-acid assembly into configurable modules intended to give manufacturers more flexibility in output, layout and future upgrades.
Plate handling remains a key constraint in automotive lead-acid battery manufacturing, where consistent stack preparation and timely feeding into enveloping machines are essential for maintaining throughput and quality. As production volumes increase, manual or semi-automated loading can limit efficiency and place additional physical demands on operators.
BM-Rosendahl has developed an automated plate loading concept aimed at addressing these challenges. The system is designed to manage the transfer of plate stacks from storage racks to the enveloping stage, with a focus on repeatability, process stability and integration into existing production environments.
The approach is modular. A pallet handling system can be configured from basic loading stations through to automated pallet exchange with buffering, depending on plant layout and output requirements. Plate stack handling is adapted to different rack designs, using robotic systems to grip or slide stacks into position. In some configurations, 3D vision systems and path-finding software are used to identify stack orientation and guide movement.
A key stage in the process is stack preparation. Plates that adhere together during storage must be separated before enveloping. BM-Rosendahl’s system includes automated stack breaking and alignment, enabling more consistent feeding into downstream equipment while reducing manual intervention.
The company also offers loading solutions that can be integrated with existing envelopers, allowing upgrades without full line replacement. This reflects a broader trend toward incremental automation, where manufacturers introduce individual modules before expanding to more comprehensive systems.
In automotive battery production, manual or semi-automated plate stack loading can limit output while exposing operators to repetitive strain and lead dust. BM-Rosendahl has responded with a fully integrated automatic plate loading concept designed to manage the process from pallet to enveloping machine.
The system combines several functional modules, including pallet handling, robotic plate stack handling, stack breaking and preparation, and automated loading into the enveloper. A 3D vision system with proprietary path-finding software enables accurate detection, orientation and collision-free handling of stacks under variable conditions.
Rather than a fixed solution, the approach is designed as a scalable “automation toolbox”. Manufacturers can begin with standalone modules – such as automated stack breaking to reduce manual handling – and expand towards full automation as production demands and investment strategies evolve. The system can also be retrofitted to existing lines, allowing gradual upgrades without major disruption.
Hitachi High-Tech sits slightly apart from these turnkey builders, but it still belongs in this section because its offer increasingly spans production technologies, quality control and process optimisation for battery plants. Its lithium-battery solutions portfolio combines contaminant inspection, analytical tools and production support, and in June 2025 Hitachi and Hitachi High-Tech said they had developed a new process informatics technology that uses intermediate-product measurement data to predict final product performance and improve yield. That is where the turnkey market is heading: more feedback loops, fewer blind spots between process step and product outcome.
The cautionary tale, of course, is Manz. In November 2024 the company said it would sell its battery cell production equipment business, and by early 2025 parts of the business and site assets were being acquired out of insolvency proceedings. The lesson is not that battery equipment demand has disappeared but that the market is ruthless.
New battery manufacturing equipment launches and innovation
Dry coating moves toward industrial reality
Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment
LEAD unveiled a next-generation dry electrode coating system in early 2026 aimed at solid-state battery scale-up. The system introduces a proprietary continuous fibrillation process, improving fibrillation efficiency by more than 50% while achieving coating precision of ±2μm at line speeds up to 100m/min. It also incorporates heat recovery and non-magnetic structural design to reduce contamination risk and energy consumption by more than 35%.
Nanohm-level weld inspection for pack assembly
Hioki
Hioki’s RM3546 resistance meter, launched in December 2025, targets one of the most critical quality steps in battery manufacturing: busbar and tab welding. The instrument delivers 1nΩ resolution, enabling detection of extremely small resistance variations linked to weld integrity, while new temperature-compensation and noise-suppression functions allow accurate measurement immediately after welding—reducing takt delays.
Digitalised coating via ‘digital twin’ integration
Hirano Tecseed
In partnership with Siemens, Hirano has introduced a digitally enabled coating platform combining machine control with simulation and digital twin modelling. The aim is to standardise coating processes, reduce scrap and improve reproducibility—particularly important as manufacturers move to higher-loading electrodes and new chemistries.
High-speed stacking and notching systems
Yinghe Technology
Yinghe has highlighted ultra-high-speed multi-station stacking and notching equipment capable of cycle times around 0.1 seconds per piece. The company is positioning these systems as key enablers for prismatic and pouch cell scale-up, particularly in European gigafactory deployments.
Formation lines scale to gigawatt-hours
Andritz
Through its Andritz Schuler battery division, Andritz has commissioned a 1.5GW formation line in Germany, underscoring the industrialisation of what remains one of the most energy-intensive stages of battery production. The focus is on throughput, footprint reduction and integration of formation data into plant-wide quality systems.
Advanced inspection and contamination control
Hitachi High-Tech
Hitachi High-Tech has expanded its X-ray-based contaminant inspection systems, designed to detect embedded metallic particles in electrode structures. The latest system, the EA8000 X-ray analyser, form part of a broader push toward inline quality assurance and predictive yield optimisation using process data.
Automated lab-to-pilot cell fabrication platforms
industrialised. The ALBATROSS (Advanced Lightweight BATreRy systems Optimised for fast charging, Safety, and Second-life applications) robotic system, reported in late 2025, integrates electrolyte formulation, coin-cell assembly and electrochemical testing in a single automated platform. While aimed at R&D, the system highlights a broader trend: translating high-throughput laboratory workflows into semi-industrial pilot-line equipment to accelerate chemistry screening and shorten development cycles.
The ALBATROSS project was co funded by the European Union and the Republic of Türkiye and was coordinated by Yeşilova Holding, with partners including Yeşilova Holding, Ford, Automotive Sanayi and Mercedes-Benz Türk.
Electrode and coating specialists: digital twins, dry processing and mixing discipline
If the last battery boom was about adding coating metres, the next one looks more like an embrace of compatibility. Hirano Tecseed’s June 2025 partnership with Siemens (above) is a good example. The two companies said they would work on standardising and digitalising battery coating machines, using simulation and digital twin tools to optimise coating processes, reduce waste and improve quality and operator performance. This is to prevent waste … in a high-volume battery plant, tiny coating deviations can become a mountain of scrap.
South Korea’s People and Technology (PNT), a leading name in roll-to-roll battery equipment, is bolstering its position by integrating conventional electrode processing with dry coating and innovative battery materials. PNT showcased its electrode manufacturing equipment and dry coating technologies at Battery Japan in March 2026. Its products include coaters, calenders and slitters used in electrode production, alongside copper foil processing technologies.
mPlus is better known for assembly, but it also positions itself as covering the process from electrode treatment to cell assembly, which reflects the increasingly blurred line between process steps. The company’s recent news has been mixed: South Korean business news outlet The Elec reported the cancellation of a sizeable equipment contract with Our Next Energy in April, a reminder of the volatility that can hit capital equipment makers when battery expansion plans slip. Even so, mPlus continues to present itself as a comprehensive supplier for multiple form factors and next-generation processes, and outside analysis has pointed to its role in precision stacking and solid-state pilot line work.
Bühler, by contrast, has had a strong year in electrode processing. In February it said it had sold more than 100 continuous mixing lines worldwide for battery slurry and dry compound production over the past decade, underlining how central mixing has become to scale-up strategy. Earlier, in April 2025, it announced an order from FIB for four continuous mixing lines for LFP battery production at the Teverola 2 plant in Italy. The message from Bühler is that slurry preparation is no longer a background process. It is one of the few places where manufacturers can simultaneously attack quality, throughput and sustainability.
Battery machinery used to celebrate motion: faster web speed, faster drying, faster calendering. Now the emphasis is increasingly on control architecture, rheology, defect prevention and the ability to move between wet- and dry-electrode routes. That is partly because materials are diversifying, from high-nickel to LFP to solid-state formats, and partly because manufacturers have learnt that brute-force scale without process discipline is an expensive way to make scrap.
Cell assembly and automation
Cell assembly has long been the stage where automation houses can show off their mechanical chops, but it is also where form-factor diversity becomes painful. CKD’s PEW series lithium-ion winding machines are marketed around high precision, foreign-matter control and productivity for automotive batteries, which remains a solid if relatively conservative pitch. The company has not generated much battery-specific launch news recently, but its continued focus on contamination-sensitive winding underlines a simple truth: even as stacking grabs headlines, winding still matters in a large share of the market.
Fuji Corporation is a company best known for SMT and assembly machinery, but its own reporting increasingly stresses fully automated factory operation, linking equipment, data and internal material transport. That matters for battery manufacturing because cell assembly is moving toward the same smart-factory logic long pursued in electronics: modular automation cells, tighter machine-to-machine communication and better orchestration between handling, joining, inspection and traceability.
Nagano Automation remains a more explicitly battery-focused automation specialist. Its English-language materials highlight production equipment for primary and secondary batteries, fuel cells and solar batteries, and stress custom design of both full production equipment and semi-automatic systems. That engineering-to-order model may prove valuable as battery makers look for pilot and bridge lines that sit between lab kit and full gigafactory tooling. Not every customer wants a standard machine; many want a machine builder willing to co-develop a process.
This is also where the Chinese suppliers are becoming harder to ignore. LEAD highlighted a new high-efficiency stacking solution for all-solid-state battery mass production in January 2026, while Yinghe has been touting its high-speed notching and stacking system. The assembly section of the market is therefore splitting in two directions at once: on one side, custom automation for non-standard and pilot applications; on the other, increasingly commoditised claims around ever-faster stacking, cutting and integrated assembly for mainstream lithium-ion formats.
Formation, testing and inspection
Formation, testing and inspection may be the most interesting machinery battleground at the moment because poor quality elsewhere in the line eventually shows up here. Hitachi High-Tech’s X-ray contaminant inspection systems are designed to detect metal particles embedded in opaque products such as electrode plates, while its broader battery-solutions portfolio targets both production and quality management. In a sector increasingly obsessed with yield loss and safety risk, foreign-particle inspection has moved from specialist concern to standard expectation.
Japanese instruments firm Hioki has had an active year. In December 2025 it launched the RM3546 resistance meter, pitched at nanohm-level busbar welding quality control in EV and ESS battery manufacturing. The company’s battery-manufacturing portfolio also spans insulation resistance, weld-quality, internal resistance, OCV and charge-discharge monitoring. The significance of this is broader than any one product: battery factories are steadily replacing pass/fail end-of-line thinking with multi-point electrical characterisation throughout assembly and finishing.
Taiwan’s Chroma manufactures a battery test and automation portfolio which covers cell formation, reliability testing, manufacturing test systems and pack/module test. Its scalable 17050 battery module and pack test platform was featured as a “Best of Show” entry at the 2026 International Battery Seminar in Orlando, Florida.
Lead battery machinery and technology
Meaningful innovation is still possible in established chemistries, especially where flexibility and reduced capital expenditure risk are priorities.
Wirtz remains one of the long-standing names in this sector, positioning itself as a full-service supplier of lead-acid battery manufacturing technologies from standalone equipment to turnkey facilities, and its equipment continues to appear in new recycling and breaking projects.
MAC Engineering, which marked its 60th anniversary in 2025, has been broadening support capability in the US, including expanded availability of CMWTEC spare parts.
CAM, meanwhile, has spent the past year emphasising the process science behind ball mills and curing chambers, especially its internal cooling system for lead oxide production and steam-cure approach to plate curing. The Italian manufacturer showed its resilience in April this year, when production ground to a halt as a result of flooding. Within six days, CAM was able to clear the devastation and resume production.
Continuing on the lead oxide theme, Penox Engineering supplies lead oxide production equipment to the battery industry, supported by more than 150 global installations. Its portfolio includes Barton reactors (B-140 and B-180) for high-capacity, automated oxide production with consistent specifications and controlled free lead, alongside the P-20 reactor for more flexible operating requirements.
Red lead production is addressed through Penox’s RFe-2 and SA-3 furnaces, designed for continuous, controlled output. The company provides turnkey PbO and Pb₃O₄ lines, covering process design, installation and commissioning, as well as after-sales services including spare parts, maintenance support and performance optimisation.
Hammond has been emphasising advanced additives and technical support, including recent work with the Consortium for Battery Innovation on charge recovery and pulse-power behaviour in auxiliary EV batteries.
Looking to lithium-ion seperators, Entek, secured a majority investment from I Squared Capital for its US separator expansion in late 2025, and in January 2026 the US Department of Energy announced an initial loan disbursement to support its Indiana plant.
Where the machinery market is heading
Taken together, the last year’s announcements suggest that battery manufacturing machinery is entering a less forgiving phase. Customers still want speed, but they are no longer impressed by speed alone. They want faster ramps, lower scrap, smaller footprints, better contamination control, more robust data and at least a plausible route from today’s lithium-ion lines to tomorrow’s dry-electrode or solid-state processes.
That should favour suppliers with real process depth, strong service networks and a credible digital layer over the top of their machines. It will also favour companies that can survive the industry’s timing shocks. The fate of Manz is a warning that the battery boom can still be brutal for equipment vendors. But for those with the balance sheet and the technology, the opportunity remains substantial. The factories being sold today are no longer just bigger. They are expected to be smarter, cleaner and much less tolerant of error. In battery manufacturing, that may be the most important product launch of all.
