Batteries that last longer, charge faster and deliver power more efficiently are a key element in the race to net zero. Since 2017, the Faraday Institution at Harwell, Oxfordshire, has been at the forefront of developing a high-tech high value and high-skill battery technology industry in the UK. Its Faraday Battery Challenge, a UKRI Challenge Fund programme, has supported over 100 start-ups, helped to create a £3.2 billion ecosystem, and played a significant role in placing the UK fourth globally for electric vehicle battery venture capital investment.
It recently announced that the initiative, now known as the Battery Innovation Programme, will continue from April 2026 to March 2030, with a £452 million investment. The programme will accelerate battery research, innovation and manufacturing scale-up, encouraging cross-sector innovation by connecting academic researchers with industry and investor partnership funding, and helping to attract inward investment in gigafactories and the supply chain. The Faraday Institution is one of three key delivery partners, providing academic research and development, along with Innovate UK and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre.
One Oxfordshire company that benefitted from the first stage of the initiative is Fluorok, which is developing a safer, lower-carbon UK-led approach to manufacturing battery electrolyte salts. Electrolyte salts are a vital component of lithium-ion batteries, and their manufacture has traditionally relied on hydrogen fluoride (HF), one of the most hazardous industrial chemicals. These manufacturing challenges have led to their production being concentrated in China. FluoRok set out to prove that battery electrolyte salts could be manufactured without hydrogen fluoride, using the company’s proprietary fluorochemical process. Its SUS-FLUOR-BAT project, supported by the Faraday Battery Challenge, demonstrated that they could be produced at scale, offering economic competitiveness and a substantially reduced environmental footprint. By bypassing hydrogen fluoride entirely, the process removes a major safety, regulatory and environmental constraint from fluorochemical manufacturing.
Fluorok, founded in 2022 and based at ARC Oxford Business Park, is another successful University of Oxford spinout. In September 2024, it raised £7.7 million in a funding round with investors including US battery and energy solution specialist Volta Energy Technologies, along with BGF, Green Generation Fund and Oxford Science Enterprises.