Green and competitive batteries in Europe – The Battery Podcast S01E14 – Transcript
With batteries driving sustainability through electrification, the batteries themselves need to become sustainable as well. To talk about bringing sustainable and competitive production to Europe, episode fourteen brings a conversation with folks from Morrow Batteries out of Norway.
Nick Finberg
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Battery Podcast from Siemens Digital Industries. For this one we are handing it off to Christine Brunner for an interview from Hannover Messe 2024 with our customer Morrow Batteries out of Norway and experts from Siemens. Let’s get right to it and listen in on how Morrow is working to bring green and competitive batteries to Europe.
Christine Brunner
Hi, great to hear from Andreas, Lars, and Bernd. Great you’re joining us here. So let’s take the seat on the sofa of wisdom. Norway! Pavilion 12, this is your base at Hannover Messe Fairground. How is that?
Lars Christian Bacher
Very good.
Christine Brunner
And coming here to Hall 9?
Lars Christian Bacher
Exciting, exciting. And this is a huge, very interesting advanced boot, I must say.
Christine Brunner
Lars, we call it the eye of the storm in Hall 9. This is where the magic happens. That’s our fair boost of Siemens. Doing a quick introduction round that everybody knows the who’s who. We got Frank-Johnny Bratton, he’s the head of digital industries for Siemens in Norway. We got Andreas Meyer, he’s the COO of Morrow batteries. We got Lars Christian Bachar, the CEO of Morrow batteries. And we got Bern Mangler, he’s the vice president solutions at Siemens. So yeah, there is the fan crowd. Look at that. Is that Pavilion 12, the Norwegian delegation? Woo hoo! All right. Wonderful. So you got a big fan crowd here, I can tell. So we got 19 minutes left. Let’s get into the topics here. I mean, which role do you see batteries playing in the climate crisis? Lars, you want to start on that?
Lars Christian Bacher
Yeah, I think everyone of us, you know, see electric cars on the streets and you see it in media. And that’s very sort of obvious to everybody and tangible in many ways. But what is more unknown perhaps is what is needed in the whole energy transition. If you want to have more renewable energy from solar and wind and expand the grid, you know, you need batteries to stabilize that grid. And this energy storage system is a huge market already and growing even more. And this is where we are sort of starting out in the energy storage and more niche markets and the cars will come later.
Christine Brunner
So this is like also your perspective in regards of the vision for the battery industry. That all of this is even more important in the near future. Can you elaborate on Siemens’ commitment and the ability to support Bernd?
Bernd Mangler
Yes, of course. I mean, three things. But first of all, of course, thanks. I really would like to thank Morrow, Lars and Andreas for the trust. And the willingness to cooperate with us. That is absolutely the base for whatever we do. Now, normally a customer always asks me, “Bernd, if you join or if we join you, what can you bring to the party?” And I think the three things we can bring to the party is that, number one, we have really a holistic portfolio. Where we can really serve what is happening in the battery industry end to end. There is the tools for design the product, for simulating the product. There are tools to design the factory or simulate the factory. When to operate the factory, the shop floor, across the whole lifetime. I think that is something we can really, where we have a very strong offering, we can bring to the table. Second, I think in terms of our experience, our teams, not just along the whole value of a battery, but what we have also cross-industry experience on a global scale. Where we can experience the ideas and what we also learn along the way, we can bring to the table. And third, and I think this is also very important, above and beyond what we have today, we have a dedicated team working with you to say, “What can we do to make the next step?” In terms of, for example, finding out very early in the process, whether there is a flaw in the material, that we are not going all the way to produce a cell which you can then throw away.
Lars Christian Bacher
If I may add to this, we are a company around 170 employees, more than 30 different nationalities, 40% females, and we have a lot of experience in our inside, in-house, among others, Andreas. But what we are dependent on is actually to have someone bringing that outside in view. You have excellent technical experience and capabilities and history, and you have a tentacle in many ways in all kinds of countries and businesses. And what you bring to us is that you push us and you challenge us. And that is exactly what we need as a company, what we need as an industry, but also what we need to see more of if we are going to solve the energy transition and the climate change challenge.
Christine Brunner
I mean, what I just learned is that Norway has the highest density of e-cars all over Europe, so you are the front runner in regards of really becoming electric. Can you explain Norway’s path to a sustainable battery leadership then, just because of this that you started early in Norway?
Lars Christian Bacher
Well, I think there are some key elements to this, and the most obvious one is, you know, 99% of electricity in Norway is from hydropower. So is that green as it gets? That’s the obvious one. But I think there are so many other advantages that they are having because you have what we call a battery coast, because we are situated at the coastline southern part of Norway, where you have many companies with a long history in different elements of what you need to see in a battery value chain. Then again, Norway as Germany and many other countries, you have excellent engineers, excellent skilled workers, and we are good at what is difficult, good at solving what is difficult, and battery cell manufacturing is difficult. But I think that’s one of the reasons why we want to do it. I think it was Kennedy that said we’re not going to the moon because it’s easy, but because it’s difficult. That’s the same for us. We’re doing this because it’s difficult.
Christine Brunner
So you love the challenges.
Lars Christian Bacher
That we do.
Andres Maier
And you’ve got the right operations officer to join you in there. So what are the current facts, Andreas, and future plans for morrow battery production? Yeah, sure, I’d like to talk about that. I mean, at the moment we are commissioning our first gigafactory. It has a production capacity of one gigawatt-hours, and for people to imagine one gigawatt-hour’s production capacity is enough to produce batteries for about 15,000 cars. So it’s not that much. And if you imagine that the global capacity at the moment is about 1,000 gigawatt-hours, and it’s to scale to 3,800 gigawatt-hours or 3.8 terawatt-hours until 2030. So there is a big growth opportunity in that. And equally, our ambitions to grow, we plan to scale at the moment to a total of 43 gigawatt-hours from the one we have already installed. So it’s like 40 times growth. It’s quite a journey ahead for us. But as Lars Christian said, we like challenges, and we take on that challenge to further grow our operations in the five to 10 years to come.
Christine Brunner
So let’s deep dive into your challenges. What about your global competitors?
Andres Maier
Yes, I mean, there is always the big question for the players in Europe. How can you be competitive? Because the main production capacity to date is in China and also in Asia overall. And how can European companies be cost competitive with Chinese companies? And I think it’s important to notice that we will not be able to compete against, but we will be able to compete alongside for two reasons. Number one, the market offers huge growth opportunities. And to be then secondly competitive in that market at the production location in Europe is that we need to produce at high OEE, at high yield, and aim for a very high degree of automisation. And I guess that’s why we are here at this location. Because, I mean, at least at this booth, there is a foundation to operate at the high automisation level.
Christine Brunner
Definitely, we know what we are doing. We’ve done our homework in that field for 176 years at Siemens. Frank, let me come to you talking about Siemens. How do we enable Morrow to meet all these challenges and the KPIs they have set themselves with their challenges?
Frank Johnny Bråthen
Yeah, so first we have the possibility to simulate the battery cell itself. But not only that, we can also simulate the production and plan everything upfront, try to optimise everything and do it the right way the first time. So that’s the simulation part. And then we go into this partner set up where we also can support the local OEMs, for instance in Korea, Japan. So we have had this set up where Andreas has contact with our Tino Hildebrandt, who has my position in Korea. And then we try to support the whole value chain in order to support Morrow as the end user, getting the machine in the right time, with the right set up and make sure that everything goes smooth. So we can kind of support with our digitalisation and then also the whole value chain talking to everyone in a closed loop. So I think we have a good partner set up to support Morrow to have successful production quite soon.
Christine Brunner
When you talk about that, it sounds like as if this is just a checklist you are doing and you push the button and you got the recipe how to work and deliver solutions. How long does this partnership between Morrow and Siemens already exist? How long have you been talking and working together?
Frank Johnny Bråthen
I think we started in 2020. Or from the very beginning, I think we started already then. So it takes some time to…
Andres Maier
Yeah, exactly. When we first started discussions and we kind of formed the basis of our collaboration and really the detailed technical discussion goes three years back when we started specifying the equipment, specifying the automation level and the control approach.
Christine Brunner
When we talk about achieving high yield and high quality in battery production, what are your golden nuggets you want to share with us?
Andres Maier
Yes, I mean that’s the big question in the industry. How do you achieve high yield and high OEE? I mean battery production as a whole, as Lars Christian said before, I mean it’s difficult because you have to master three different kinds of processes. You start with a chemical process, when you mix the slurry, powders and solvents together, then you get into a mechanical assembly of the battery cell and finally you do electrical activation of the battery to make it functional. And key in that process is of course on the one hand mastering your processes and that requires experience, I would say, as a very important foundation. And secondly is that you collect data about your processes and with that data on the one hand do an effective process control but also use that data for the best use of understanding what happens in your processes and do kind of a continuous improvement based on the data you gather and the heart of that data system is the manufacturing execution system or MES, which I believe will be really the essence of driving OEE improvements and yield improvements.
Christine Brunner
And Lars, come in.
Lars Christian Bacher
In this industry, like every industry, there is something called a learning curve. You learn, you improve and then you become better. And our first sort of proof point of that is our batteries that we are offering to the market because after a few months of production, the cycle life improved by 30% and the energy density by 10%. So there is something about the skilled workers, these engineers that you have in Europe and many other places that makes me believe that we will be able to make it. And in addition, Andreas is humbled in this, but we have also been able to recruit people that have done it before. And I think that is something that you really should look for if you want to invest in and work with a battery company. Do they have people that have done it before? Because it is difficult.
Christine Brunner
In regards of that it’s difficult, you looked for a good company to give you support, you just could have been the customer, but you chose to go for a partnership. Why is that?
Lars Christian Bacher
I think there is something about understanding that the best way to really become good yourself is to have someone that knows you well and you love them well so that you can play on each other’s strengths and thereby add to this and become gradually better.
Christine Brunner
I guess it’s also meaning trust and that’s what we from Siemens are very proud that you see us as a trusted partner in supporting you in your challenges and I think the team in Norway definitely has done something right in regards of really having those happy customers here on site now. Can you provide an update on the current status and also the next step of the partnership? I’m looking to you Bernd and then later on to you Lars to comment on Bernd’s.
Bernd Mangler
Maybe one remark, I think why it is also very honouring for us but also very important for us at Siemens. I mean currently if we look to the newspapers, if we watch TV there is a lot of discussion about the transformation of the mobility of e-cars. However, forward looking a few years ahead, the topic of storage in terms of sustainable energy not just on the street but for the whole society becomes more and more in my eyes even dominant. And therefore I am very happy that we were able to come to this partnership because I think it’s also incredibly important for Siemens that today is a lot of e-car but we already work with companies in forward thinking about battery technology for storage, for the grid, for this whole topic which also fits very well in our targets that we want to be an important player in the whole area of sustainability. And in terms of the next step of course when it is an absolute must for me to keep up with the speed, the ever, still ever changing technology in this area, it’s an emerging thing where now a lot of money fuels into research and development, the speed and what we contribute with our knowledge to find ways to increase the yield and all that.
Lars Christian Bacher
I think for us the most important now short term is actually to get this plant up and running because there is the best proof point that you can have is actually demonstrating that you are able to do it. And we will learn tons based on that I’m sure. And we want to take that learning into the next step. So we have a strategy to take us to 43 gigawatt and the timeline for that will be a little bit dependent on how we juggle around this for the rest of the year. But I’m not sure very many that are aware of the following. December 2020 this company was established. It’s regulating the land for industrial purposes, applying for a building permit. We got that approved in four weeks. We started building nine months later. The factory is there and then we put the production equipment inside. In other words three and a half years after the company was established we will have a gigafactory in Norway producing batteries. Three and a half years I think that’s pretty good for a startup.
Christine Brunner
Yeah that deserves definitely a big round of applause here. That is wonderful. And I want to bring in here Veronika Bienert was on stage just before she’s the CEO of Siemens Financial Services. You want to jump in there with the support from financing side which has been given there as a partnership as well.
Lars Christian Bacher
Yeah we are very proud to have Siemens as an investor in Morrow. That is extremely strong validation of the company and the technology. We are not focusing on technology development within production technology but more on the chemistry, battery chemistry side of it. And it has been very very helpful for us. It helps attract other investors and you have a Danish nursery fund investing in the company and you know Norwegian companies and other industrial companies so very very helpful. Very grateful.
Christine Brunner
And we are very proud as said that we are part of that partnership and looking forward to maybe next year’s Hannover Messe talking about how that all went and get first hand information from you about how many gigawatts you’ve been delivering.
Lars Christian Bacher
We will be very glad to participate next year.
Christine Brunner
Thank you so much. Big round of applause to our four panelists here. Morrow batteries definitely a company to watch on the market.
Nick Finberg
As always, a big thanks to the audience for listening to the Battery Podcast. If this is your first time, make sure to check out our other episodes with customers and experts from around the world of battery. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And until next time, you can check out our website siemens.com/battery to learn more.
