‘Expanded Capacity’: Assembly line coming to Electrovaya plant soon
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Big things are going to be happening quickly at the Electrovaya plant in Ellicott.
Construction at the plant continues on schedule, with the dry room at the facility completed and electrical and HVAC infrastructure upgrades ongoing. Construction of major cell-manufacturing equipment has also been completed.
Dr. Raj DasGupta, Electrovaya CEO, said the company is about to begin an eight-week factory-acceptance-testing program at its equipment supplier in Korea, during which the complete cell assembly line will be assembled and operated prior to shipment to Jamestown.
"The most significant milestone and the one I’d like to draw your attention to is that in approximately 7 to 10 days, we will begin an extended eight-week factory acceptance test program at our equipment supplier in Korea. This is not a component level check. The full cell assembly line will be connected and set up to replicate the planned operation in Jamestown and run at the supplier’s facility so that we can validate and complete the process before anything is shipped. We are sending approximately 10 people from our Jamestown operations teams to Korea to participate in that testing directly,which means that people who will run this line in New York will have run it already at speed before it arrives. In parallel, logistics and shipping planning for the equipment is underway now."
There's a reason DasGupta is excited about the new manufacturing line taking a major step forward. The Jamestown facility is expected to provide increased manufacturing capacity to support Electrovaya's expansion into energy storage, robotics, defense and other mission-critical applications, while establishing domestic U.S. lithium-ion cell-manufacturing capability.
"Overall, I’m very pleased with the progress at the site," DasGupta said. "As I mentioned previously, the start-up of this facility will represent a step change for the company and will not only provide us expanded capacity to execute our plans for energy storage, robotics and other segments, but more importantly, will position us as one of very few advanced lithium-ion battery manufacturers with domestic manufacturing capabilities."
WHERE JAMESTOWN FACILITY FITS INTO ELECTROVAYA'S PLANS
Electrovaya entered Chautauqua County known as a maker of lithium-ion batteries, largely for forklifts. DasGupta is thinking bigger than that, and those thoughts have begun coming to fruition in recent weeks. A long-term commercial agreement with Amazon and the launch of Electrovaya's new ElvaPulse batteries into the data center energy storage market will drive continued growth. In fact, DasGupta described them as two of the company's four pillars. The Gigafactory on Precision Way, Ellicott, is the third.
"We moved Jamestown to the cusp of production,and we posted the best gross margin in our history while staying profitable," DasGupta said. "From here, four pillars frame the story: Amazon, ElvaPulse, Jamestown and margins. Fiscal 2027 is when they converge as Jamestown capacity comes online and our newer verticals begin to scale. Our job over the next four quarters is to convert that position into profitable revenue growth, and that is exactly how we are measuring ourselves."
John Gibson, Electrovaya CFO and secretary, said the company continues to use proceeds from its prior equity raising activities to support research and development. At the end of the quarter, the company had $13.1 million in unrestricted cash on hand and more than $7.8 million available under its bank facility.
"We believe we have adequate liquidity to support our expansion into these new verticals and anticipated growth as we continue through fiscal 2026 and into 2027," Gibson said.
The importance of the Jamestown facility has been a common talking point over the past couple of years on Electrovaya's conference calls with investor analysts. The trip to Korea to test the fuel cell assembly line, followed by the actual installation of the line in the Ellicott plant, positions 2028 as a year of rapid growth for Electrovaya. During this week's conference call DasGupta and Gibson noted the company's solid financial status even as it works to expand beyond battery technology for material handling uses.
"Electrovaya to one sense of things, what we’ve done over the last few years is prove the business, prove the technology," DasGupta said. "We don’t have the scale as yet to make it very significant. That changes with the advent of the Jamestown production. and some of these new products, which we’ve been working on, which will be able to be scaled as that new capacity comes online. So 2028 is when that’s all there, right? So that’s really, I would say, the first full year where we have capacity, we have the products, that’s where we will really demonstrate to the world the significance of this technology and how it can be impactful in some of those key end markets."
Robotics is an area DasGupta said should become a key new market for Electrovaya as well as high-voltage battery systems. Electrovaya's Mississauga isn't configured to make high-voltage battery systems quickly, though Electrovaya is working to improve that situation. The high-voltage battery systems are also complex to manufacture. "The Jamestown operations can’t come online soon enough now, because Jamestown is in full construction mode, we can’t really utilize the facility at all until that construction is completed."