Australian battery company Redflow has completed its first consignment of ZBM2 batteries using battery stacks produced at its new factory in Thailand.
The battery stack is the critical part of the Redflow ZBM2 zinc-bromine flow battery— with electrodes that charge the battery by depositing zinc on a membrane and discharge it by reversing that process.
The Thai-made battery stacks were installed on existing ZBM2 battery ‘tank sets’ at Redflow’s headquarters in Brisbane, Australia and are now scheduled for delivery to customers after completing pre-delivery tests.
Redflow said it will continue to assemble, test and deliver “limited quantities” of ZBM2 batteries with Thai-produced battery stacks until it starts end-to-end manufacturing and testing of complete batteries in Thailand by June of this year.
Redflow CEO Richard Aird said: “Our first requirement of the new factory is quality components, which it is now producing in the electrode stack— the most complex and critical part of our product.”
Aird said the pre-delivery tests “confirmed that these complete batteries… perform to standard, so we are now scheduling deliveries to start supplying outstanding back orders.”
Redflow announced last year it had chosen Thailand as the base for its new Southeast Asia manufacturing plant following a review of how to shift manufacturing closer from Mexico to lucrative markets in Southeast Asia and cut supply chain costs.