Morrow Batteries ASA has concluded the FATs in Asia of all the production equipment for the Morrow Cell Factory (MCF), the company’s first factory in Norway. Installation has already started in Arendal, and Morrow is scheduled to start battery production in mid-2024.
The battery manufacturer has conducted FATs since late May, starting with the coating line, followed by the mixing line, vacuum dryer, formation line, stacking line, notching line and finally, the cell assembly line. The production line consists of equipment from several suppliers, primarily based in South Korea. Morrow uses existing, conventional technology already used in producing EV batteries today.
On November 12, Morrow engineers completed the FATs, marking all equipment approved and qualified to be installed at the Morrow Cell Factory (MCF) in Arendal, Norway.
Following the FAT approval, equipment installation commenced at the MCF on November 13. Equipment will keep arriving weekly at the Port of Arendal until early 2024, per the planned installation sequence.
“We are pleased about our industrial progress – the completed FAT, and now the equipment installation, is another important milestone for us, taking us closer to production starting next summer. Morrow has already produced over 1,000 batteries at our Asian production line. We have a global research team at the Morrow Research Center, the largest in the Nordics. We are on time and on schedule to deliver the batteries we need today and develop the batteries of tomorrow.,” says Morrow CEO Lars Christian Bacher.
During the factory acceptance testing, 396 individual checklists with a total of nearly 17.000 checkpoints were completed along the entire production line. Before packing and shipping, rectification work will be carried out to close any checkpoints that were left open during FAT.
“We now know that the equipment in the production line satisfies Morrow’s machine performance, quality, and safety requirements. Our chosen suppliers are all best-in-class within their respective areas of the manufacturing process and supply similar equipment to the leading Korean battery cell makers,” says Chief Operating Officer Dr. Andreas Maier.
The installation process will continue over the following months. It will be concluded by the site acceptance tests (SATs) of the different equipment scopes at the end of May 2024, which marks the final handover of the equipment from the suppliers to Morrow. During SAT, all equipment will be operated in the correct process flow, and the team will run serial production tests