RIL pushes production timeline for battery packs by a year to 2024

Reliance Industries (RIL) has reset its battery pack production timeline, shifting it from 2023 earlier to 2024, details shared in the oil-to-telecom conglomerate’s latest annual report suggest.

In the FY23 annual report released on Sunday, the company has listed the start of battery pack production in 2024. A year ago, at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM), Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director of RIL, had said, “We aim to start production of battery packs by 2023 and scale up to a fully integrated 5 GWh annual cell-to-pack manufacturing facility by 2024.”

The timeline for the scale-up to a fully integrated 5 GWh annual cell-to-pack manufacturing facility remains 2024, the latest annual report shows.

An email query sent to the company on Monday received no response at the time of writing this story.

Battery manufacturing is part of RIL’s focus on the new energy business — a conscious shift from fossil fuels, which, according to Ambani in his latest statement, cannot continue much longer.

In December 2021, RIL announced the acquisition of a leading global sodium-ion battery technology company, Faradion, for an enterprise value of GBP 100 million with plans to use the latter’s state-of-the-art technology at its proposed fully integrated energy storage gigafactory in Jamnagar.

According to Faradion’s website, the now wholly-owned subsidiary of RIL installed its first sodium-ion battery in Australia in December 2022.

“From our vantage point, any timeline change is not a big concern, as we value the investment only at book. Further, such delays are expected with new technologies,” said an analyst tracking RIL, requesting anonymity.