Australian flow battery firm Redflow has chosen Thailand as the base for its new Southeast Asia manufacturing plant.
Redflow said in a 17 August Australian Stock Exchange announcement it had formed a new entity – Redflow (Thailand) Limited – to negotiate a lease on premises in a free trade zone and apply for licensing and regulatory permits.
The move follows a strategic review that set out plans to shift manufacturing closer from Mexico to lucrative markets in Southeast Asia and cut supply chain costs.
CEO Simon Hackett (pictured) said the firm’s stack manufacturing equipment from North America had arrived in Thailand “ahead of schedule” and the company was “on track” to start production with its manufacturing partner, Malaysia-based MPTS – a long-term supplier of a core component of Redflow’s battery stack.
Redflow’s last North American production batch of ZBM2 batteries was now in transit to Australia, Hackett said.
Redflow said it chose Thailand because of its proximity to the firm’s supply chain and marketplaces. The free trade zone offered “good manufacturing expertise, competitive logistics, an attractive labour cost and effective tax treatment for international manufacturers”.
Meanwhile, Redflow said it was confident that battery performance issues reported earlier this year as a result of impurities in battery electrolyte had been “resolved”.
The company said it is applying a “successfully tested remediation process” to batteries that require it.
On sales of its ZCell home batteries, Redflow said units have been installed and continue to be sold across Australia.
In addition, the company said it had now delivered all the batteries for its largest order to date to New Zealand-based telecoms systems integrator Hitech Solutions. The order, worth about AUD800,000 (US$633,000), was for zinc-bromine batteries to be deployed at telecoms sites across a Pacific Islands nation.
