Faradion welcomes Paul Blomfield MP to Sheffield site

• Paul Blomfield MP visits Faradion facility in Sheffield
• Faradion discusses its technology and the R&D landscape in Sheffield.
• Sodium-ion technology could make batteries cheaper and easier to transport.

Paul Blomfield, MP for Sheffied Central, has visited the headquarters of sodium-ion battery innovators, Faradion. The technology start-up, which is based at Sheffield University’s Innovation Centre, welcomed Mr Blomfied on Friday 30 October to learn about its pioneering work.

During his visit, Mr Blomfield met key members of the Faradion team including recently appointed CEO, Francis Massin, and the company’s founder and chairman, Chris Wright. A member of the BIS Select Committee, Mr Blomfield was keen to hear Faradion’s views on the skills that it needs in order to develop and how R&D could be further encouraged in the local area.

Faradion employs XX engineers, scientists and technicians in Sheffield, a number of whom graduated from the University of Sheffield. The company has pioneered a new type of battery technology which has the potential to be used in energy storage, electric vehicles and consumer electronics, such as mobile phones.

The technology employs sodium rather than lithium, which is currently used in batteries. This would make batteries around 30% cheaper than those currently on offer, and they would also be more straightforward to transport by air.

Paul Blomfied MP, said: ““It was a pleasure to visit Faradion to learn more about their exciting new sodium-ion technology. Sheffield has a proud history of technological innovation and it’s great to see Sheffield engineers, scientists and technicians developing pioneering battery technology at Sheffield University’s Innovation Centre.”

Francis Massin, Faradion’s CEO said: “It was an honour to welcome Paul Blomfield MP to our facility in Sheffield. He was eager to learn about the work that we are doing what the future holds for Faradion. The expertise of skilled workers in Sheffield has been an invaluable tool in helping us to develop our sodium-ion battery technology.”

Earlier this year, a project to demonstrate Faradion’s sodium-ion battery technology was part-funded by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency in a competition for ‘disruptive technologies in low carbon vehicles’. It was led by Faradion and supported by Williams Advanced Engineering and the University of Oxford.

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About Faradion Ltd

Faradion is pioneering the next generation of advanced, low-cost battery materials. These novel materials employ sodium-ion (Na-ion) technology which, when incorporated into batteries, will be virtually indistinguishable in terms of performance from the leading lithium-ion (Li-ion) products currently on the market.

Na-ion batteries have a number of benefits compared to battery technologies already on the market, with the foremost advantage being the low cost. The sodium salts used to prepare these battery materials are highly abundant, coming from more renewable sources than those of equivalent lithium salts, making them both cheap and easily obtainable. If compared to the equivalent salts used to make Li-ion batteries, the cost is approximately 1/10th.

Faradion was virtually the first investment made by Finance Yorkshire and is headquartered in Sheffield’s Innovation Centre. See more at: www.faradion.co.uk