Ilika plc (LON:IKA) Chief Executive Officer Graeme Purdy caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the €1 billion bid on renewable energy for battery maker Saft
Q1: Now we’ve just one question for you today on oil major Total who’ve just made a near €1 billion on renewable energy for battery maker Saft. Now the bid for Saft would be a financially significant acquisition for Total, why do you think a fossil fuel company has decided on this strategy when others, despite the rhetoric, have played at the margins of renewables?
A1: Well I think that the major oil companies are struggling with consistently weak oil prices and also on top of that over the past say 30 years there’s been a trend towards having less and less access to oil reserves as the national oil companies are able to produce their own oil reserves rather than rely on the private sector involvement of the big oil majors. Against this backdrop, we’ve seen an increase in percentage of renewable energy penetration across the world but in particular actually in Northern Europe, so you take the Scandinavian countries for instance and Norway produces 96% of its electricity from renewables, Denmark produces 43% of its electricity and by 2050 has plans to meet 100% of its energy needs with renewables. One of the biggest challenges with renewables, with storage, and that’s where companies like Saft has got a very interesting offer because they have large scale renewable energy storage solutions using their lithium ion batteries, they’ve already deployed them in countries like Canada, the US, Spain and Madagascar and that means for a company like Total it effectively securing its role as an energy company and moving with the global trends towards renewables.
Ilika plc is a United Kingdom-based holding company. The Company is focused on its lead program, the development of a solid-state battery. The solid-state batteries developed by the Company are a type of lithium-ion batteries in which the liquid or polymer electrolyte has been replaced by a ceramic ion-conductor. The Company’s other development projects also include high entropy alloys, superalloys, fuel cell catalyst technology, tunable dielectrics, metal gates for dielectrics, piezoelectrics, hydrogen storage alloys and corrosion-resistant alloys.
