Flow battery maker Redflow goes into administration

By Peter Roberts

Zinc bromine flow battery manufacturer Redflow has gone into voluntary administration after failing to secure new funds from investors.

The company, which manufactures its Australian developed batteries in Thailand, has appointed Richard Hughes and David Orr from Deloitte as administrators.

Redflow was one of the first to launch a commercial zinc flow battery and achieved significant successes in international markets with its Thai batteries.

However it appears not all was well with its business model and recently the company unveilled a strategic plan to develop a larger scale X10 battery based on its existing stack design targeted at larger megawatt hour scale projects.

Australia is a major potential market for such things and Redlow proposed a new factory be built and commissioned in Queensland to manufacture the X10 batteries at scale.

According to the company: “This strategic plan requires significant capital.

“Over the past nine months Redflow has engaged with a number of state and federal governments and agencies that confirmed that significant Government support was available to fund the Redfow plan.”

The Queensland Critical Minerals and Battery Technology Fund allocated to Redflow up to $1.12 million to develop its plan – however the federal government backed Australian Vanadium (AVL) to develop locally vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) prototypes.

Redflow said: “In order to access these funds, however, Redflow required significant ‘matching funding’ from the Australian capital markets.

“Based on encouraging external financial advice, Redflow considered and pursued the equity funding sources available to it, but in the current market, has been unable to attract the required equity support.”

Something must have been fundamentally wrong with the business because in the absence of achieving the investor support for an expansion, the directors considered it was ‘unable to continue as a going concern’ and ‘had no option’ but to place the Redflow Group into voluntary administration.

The administrators will now undertake a review and assessment of Redflow’s business and financial position before making recommendations as to the future of the company.

“Redflow will work with the administrators to engage with parties to build on what Redflow has developed to date.”

One is left to wonder whether the company’s fortunes might have been different if it had sited its operations in Australia, in a supportive state such as Queensland, and also got Canberra behind it at an early stage.

Things could certainly have been easier in the market in Australia, and perhaps the pedigree of an Australian battery from the nation leading the move to wind and solar power plus storage might have been a better story internationally than that of one coming from a low cost country not particularly known for innovation.

Let’s hope the administrators can resurrect the business and its plan to manufacture in Australia.

Further reading:
Redflow belatedly eyes local battery manufacture

Picture: Redflow