Holyvolt is transforming battery manufacturing with a proprietary water-based screen-printing process designed to reduce costs, simplify production and support more sustainable battery manufacturing across Europe and North America
What was the founding insight behind Holyvolt – what gap in the market did you see that others were missing?
The way batteries are made hasn’t really changed since lithium-ion was first used in consumer electronics back in 1991. Slot-die coating and toxic, NMP-based wet slurries are still the industry standard, and there’s limited further development potential in that process. You can’t build a lasting advantage using the same manufacturing approach as everyone else.
Our founding insight was that the real constraint on cost, sustainability and flexibility was the manufacturing process rather than the chemistry. So, we built our own proprietary, water-based screen-printing process, drawing on more than 20 years of screen-printing and battery R&D.
You’ve replaced slot-die coating with a screen-printing process that eliminates toxic NMP solvents. What does that actually mean in practice – how much shorter are your drying ovens, and how much capex/footprint does it save versus conventional lines?
In practice, it changes the shape of the factory. Conventional slot-die coating flows a thin, solvent-based slurry onto the current collector. We press a high-solid-content, water-based paste onto it instead, building it up layer by layer. Because the paste has a much higher solid content, drying is far quicker, so our ovens run at around 20-30 metres, compared with 80-100 metres for solvent-based lines.
And because there’s no NMP in our technology, we’re able to remove entire stages of the process and simplify the factory layout. There’s no solvent vapour capture equipment, no filtration loop, and no hazardous chemical recycling infrastructure to build or run. That means smaller buildings, lower construction costs and lower energy consumption. And because NMP is toxic and highly flammable, our approach is safer and more sustainable. Our modular architecture also means we can add capacity incrementally, rather than committing to gigafactory-scale CAPEX before we’re ready.
How does Holyvolt’s screen-printing technology work, and what makes it more capable than what an OEM’s existing wet-slurry manufacturing line can do?
Where a wet-slurry line flows a thin slurry onto the collector, we use high-precision, high-pressure screen printing to press a thicker, water-based paste on, layer by layer, in a tightly controlled process.
That approach opens up capabilities a wet-slurry line doesn’t have. We can build multilayer electrodes, combining materials with different performance characteristics within the same electrode. We can microstructure electrodes to improve rate performance without sacrificing energy density. Design freedom is significantly greater too, which means it’s much simpler for us to produce bespoke shapes for specialised applications, rather than just traditional form factors.
We’ve also overcome the historical problems with water-based cathode production, such as cracking and reduced energy density, so our NMC cells are demonstrating competitive performance. We can print thicker electrodes too, giving a higher ratio of active to passive material, which again improves energy density, and because our tooling is quicker to modify than slot-die equipment, we’re not locked into a single slurry formulation the way conventional lines are.
Who are your primary customers – is it two-wheeler, robotics and drone makers, defence, or eventually EV OEMs – and how has working with Holyvolt changed their approach to sourcing battery cells?
Our near-term focus is short-cycle applications – two-wheelers, robotics and drones – which typically have a one-to-two-year validation window, compared with five-plus years for automotive. That lets us prove the technology before moving into longer-cycle applications. EV OEMs follow once we’ve demonstrated operational excellence at prototype scale.
What changes for these customers is the basis on which they’re sourcing. Rather than starting with an off-the-shelf cell format and designing the product around it, customers can specify the shape and performance they actually need first, because our process can be built around that specification rather than the other way round.
And because our lower-CAPEX, modular process doesn’t require gigafactory-scale commitments, customers who might previously have been priced out of a dedicated cell programme, or forced to accept a shared, generic product, can now commission something built specifically for them.
You recently acquired Wildcat Discovery Technologies. What problem does that solve, and why was their High Throughput Platform the missing piece alongside your manufacturing tech?
If you solve manufacturing but not materials development, the bottleneck simply moves from one to another rather than disappearing altogether. That’s the gap Wildcat closes for us. Their High Throughput Platform can synthesise and screen thousands of material combinations simultaneously, reaching optimal material systems up to ten times faster than conventional R&D, and it generates terabyte-scale, structured datasets that are well suited to AI-driven materials discovery.
Combined with our screen-printing process, new chemistries can move from lab to production on a far more compressed timescale. It turns Holyvolt from a manufacturing technology company into a fully integrated battery innovator, with end-to-end capability from molecular discovery through to pilot-scale production. Wildcat’s work on cobalt- and nickel-free materials also gives us real upside on performance and cost, with supply chains anchored in Europe and North America rather than further exposure to expensive and geopolitically sensitive materials.
Western supply chain independence from Asia is a growing priority, but scaling new battery manufacturing remains a barrier. How significant is that problem, and how does Holyvolt help solve it?
It’s a significant challenge. In October 2025, China’s Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs introduced export controls on cathode and anode materials and specialised battery manufacturing equipment, highlighting how dependent global battery production remains on a concentrated supply chain. For manufacturers looking to build cell production in Europe and North America, reducing that dependence has become an increasingly important priority. This is also essential for sectors looking to build sovereign capability as a strategic imperative, such as the defence industry.
The biggest barrier to scaling new manufacturing is capital. Conventional production lines require enormous upfront investment, hazardous solvent infrastructure and long lead times before any cells are produced. Our lower-CAPEX, smaller-footprint, modular process removes much of that barrier, enabling manufacturers to establish production closer to customers without committing to a single gigafactory-scale facility. Combined with Wildcat’s materials capability, it provides a credible, world-class Western alternative for advanced battery manufacturing.
How has the industry – OEMs, Tier 1s, defence primes – responded to what Holyvolt is doing, and where do you see the greatest urgency for wider adoption?
We’re in active projects with a number of significant partners across the battery value chain who are supporting us with co-development because they see screen-printing as a genuinely differentiated technology. Our policy is not to discuss specific relationships, but the level of engagement has been encouraging. Our investors have also been a valuable sounding board.
The greatest urgency for wider adoption is where manufacturers are looking for more resilient, localised supply chains alongside cleaner, more capital-efficient production. We’re initially focused on sectors such as robotics, drones and two-wheelers because their one-to-two-year development cycles allow us to prove the technology and scale commercially.
Beyond that, we see significant demand in grid-scale energy storage and solar, where growing requirements for energy security, sustainability and alternatives to Asia-concentrated supply chains are driving interest in new manufacturing approaches.
What has been the defining milestone for Holyvolt so far – the moment you knew the business had real traction?
For me, it was completing the acquisition of Wildcat Discovery Technologies. Wildcat is the world’s leading battery materials development firm, with more than 18 years of materials development history, and bringing their High Throughput Platform together with our screen-printing process gave us genuine end-to-end capability.
It followed our recent €20 million funding round, and it felt like real validation of the strategy we set out from the beginning: proprietary process technology, paired with world-class chemistry development, proven first in sectors where we can move quickly.
Where do you see solvent-free, screen-printed battery manufacturing fitting into the broader energy transition over the next five years – and what’s Holyvolt and Wildcat’s role in shaping that?
Over the next five years, I’d expect this technology to move from where it is today; short-cycle applications such as two-wheelers, robotics and drones, into automotive-qualification volumes. I also expect it to extend beyond batteries, into thin-film solar PV, where the same process removes the need for clean rooms or vacuum processing and bypasses the polysilicon supply chain entirely.
Both battery and solar PV production are dominated by China today. The next five years will be about Europe and North America building credible, sovereign capabilities in both. That’s the role we want Holyvolt and Wildcat to play; proprietary, water-based, capital-efficient manufacturing combined with genuinely accelerated materials development, delivering clean energy technology that’s cost-effective, sustainable and independent of Asia, built on local supply chains and production rather than another layer of dependency.
Picturecredits Holyvolt
Thank you Mathias Ingvarsson for the Interview
Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.
