10 years of CUSTOMCELLS: Battery cell specialist ready for the next phase of growth

Itzehoe/Tübingen, September 27, 2022 - More than 150 employees, locations in Itzehoe and Tübingen, strong partnerships, and a sustainable footprint as a developer and manufacturer along the entire value chain: That is the record CUSTOMCELLS has built in the ten years since the company was founded.

What started as a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute is now one of the leading developers and manufacturers of application-specific battery cells – and thus a pacesetter for comprehensive electrification, on the road, in the air, and in the water. Now, CUSTOMCELLS is setting the course for another phase of growth.

Scientific know-how ensures steady growth

"We've worked on more than 1,400 industrial projects and have successfully anchored our technology in the automotive industry as well as in the aviation sector. Today, we enable the most innovative underwater applications, the construction of high-performance power devices, and provide alternative propulsion systems for top-level motorsports. The aviation sector in particular still offers us tremendous opportunities, which we will exploit," says Leopold König, CEO and one of the two co-founders of CUSTOMCELLS. "In the rearview mirror of history, the success of CUSTOMCELLS is anything but self-evident. After all, in the year of its founding, Germany was still discussing the possible failure of e-mobility. But we always believed in the potential of lithium-ion technology – and relied on the immense know-how of our employees, without whom CUSTOMCELLS would never have been possible," adds co-founder and CEO Torge Thönnessen.

Massive expansion at sites in Itzehoe and Tübingen

CUSTOMCELLS is closing the gap between prototyping and mass production – and doing it successfully. Over the past ten years, the company has developed into a full-service provider that now supports its more than 500 customers from initial ideas to project planning to commissioning of micro- and gigafactories.
This is also reflected in the number of employees. Since 2019 alone, the company's size has increased fivefold from 30 employees to more than 150. "An insane amount has already happened in the past 10 years – and we are still far from exploiting our full potential. Over the next 10 years, we will accelerate the pace once again and position ourselves as the leading premium brand in the global battery market. We have already successfully set the course for this," says Dr. Dirk Abendroth, CEO of the CUSTOMCELLS Group since May 2022.

In Itzehoe, CUSTOMCELLS is currently expanding its site by building a modern, sustainable office complex and establishing a new, production-related research and development facility for High Throughput Experimentation (HTE). By mid-2023, the number of employees at the Itzehoe site alone is expected to increase from 110 to up to 160. At the same time, the company is expanding capacity at the Tübingen site for the production of battery cells that enable electric flying.

AI and data analytics expertise for the cell systems of the future

Meanwhile, at Cellforce Group GmbH (CFG), a joint venture with Porsche AG founded in 2020, work has already begun on the construction of a state-of-the-art development and production site for the manufacture of battery cells. In 2024, the production facilities there are scheduled to go into operation with an initial capacity of at least 100 MWh per year. This corresponds to high-performance battery cells for around 1,000 vehicles.

In addition to expanding its development and production capacities, CUSTOMCELLS is also pressing ahead with building up digital expertise within its the company by making increasing use of the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and data analytics. Use of these digital technologies along the entire value chain allow the company to offer new approaches to sustainable electrification as well as state-of-the-art battery solutions together with partners.

With access to 14 industrialized electrode technologies, to more than 250 raw materials in stock and to a production equipped with state-of-the-art electrode and cell manufacturing machines, CUSTOMCELLS has quickly become one of the leading manufacturers of customized battery cells within its ten-year history. In the total quality management process, the development and design of CUSTOMCELLS battery cells is executed according to the DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 standard certified production facilities, indicating cell development and manufacturing of the highest quality. In addition to various patents and licenses, CUSTOMCELLS maintains numerous partnerships with leading research and development institutions and university laboratories worldwide and is committed to uniform standards in education and training for employees in the battery cell industry throughout Europe.

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Press Contact
Mike Eisermann
Head of Marketing & PR
Custom Cells Itzehoe GmbH
Fraunhoferstr. 1 b | 25524 Itzehoe, Germany
Phone: +49 160 4351 596
E-Mail: mike.eisermann@customcells.de