Mr David Bent has joined Nexeon as Production Director from Dow Corning where he was latterly Global Capital Engineering Regional Manager, Europe and Asia. He was responsible for several major investment projects while living and working in Europe and China. In China, he held execution responsibility for the first phase of a £1 billion ‘green field’ chemical plant. David has a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering and is a Chartered Member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Joining Nexeon as R&D Director, Dr Mary McKiernan has a strong track record of material design experience in the organic electronics industry gained at Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), now a Sumitomo Chemical Group Company. Her previous role was Research Director at CDT where she had specific responsibility for material development strategy, and management of a significant multi-disciplinary team in the UK and a chemistry team in India. She has a strong record of developing collaborations with external companies, and has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge.

These appointments are important as Nexeon expands to accelerate application development and to increase support to its customers. As well as impressive technical progress, Nexeon is engaged in a number of significant commercial negotiations and customer-led projects with major global companies in the automotive and consumer electronics sectors.

“I’m delighted to welcome Mary and David to the Nexeon team”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon. “They will be an important part of our growth plans as we move towards establishing the 250 tonnes/pa manufacturing facility for which we raised £40 million last year, and build up our working relationship with OEM partners.”

The new recruits join a high profile team: in the last couple of months, Nexeon has won two Rushlight Awards and a Climate Week Award for the ‘Best Technological Breakthrough’.

The awards ceremony was a splendid black tie (with a green twist!) affair at the Science Museum in London, and was presented by Business XL magazine along with sixteen sponsors, including the British Photovoltaic Association, Low Carbon Economy, Cleantech Investor and Science Business.

Imperial Innovations, a major investor in Nexeon, was also shortlisted for the award of Investor of the Year.

Nexeon has won a prestigious Climate Week Award in the Best Technological Breakthrough category, for their lithium ion battery technology that uses silicon in place of carbon.

Finalists in 14 categories along with eminent individuals attended the Climate Week reception at Lancaster House, London on 12 March. The Climate Week Awards recognise the very best of what Britain has to offer in combating climate change, including outstanding achievements by individuals, businesses and communities.

Judges included activist Bianca Jagger, the Bishop of London Richard Chartres, the Prince of Wales’ environmental advisor Tony Juniper and the government’s chief climate scientist Sir Robert Watson.

Climate Week (12-18 March) is Britain’s biggest climate change campaign. In 2011 half a million people attended events. This year, over 2,300 events have already been registered across the country.

Nexeon was joint winner of the Best Technological Breakthrough category alongside the Department for International Development.

Nexeon has created a new type of silicon which is structured at the microscopic level like the spines of a hedgehog, and enables a battery to store more power. Most modern devices, such as mobile phones and laptops, use batteries which store electricity using carbon anodes. Silicon can store ten times as much energy as carbon but until now has been unsuitable for batteries because of physical degradation during battery charge and discharge. Nexeon’s innovation uses silicon anodes, based on research from Imperial College, London, that allow batteries to last longer and store more energy. This technology could be crucial in improving the performance of renewable energy from wind and solar sources, allowing more energy to be stored during peak generation periods for use later. It would also mean that anything using batteries, from laptops to electric cars, would run for longer on a single charge.

Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon said: “We are delighted to have won this important award. So many quality companies are working hard on environmental initiatives, and we are especially proud to have had our progress recognised.”

The Prime Minister, David Cameron said: “I am extremely pleased to support Britain’s second Climate Week. When I gave my backing to the first Climate Week in 2011, we did not know what the level of participation would be and whether there would be appetite for joint action to help prevent and adapt to climate change. The response was huge. Half a million people attended over 3,000 events, making it Britain’s biggest ever environmental occasion and the country’s largest climate change campaign. Climate Week 2012 is expected to have even more impact.

“Climate Week’s Headline Partner Tesco, and its Supporting Partners EDF Energy, H&M, Nissan and SodaStream can be proud of the campaign they have helped to create. They are also showing what is possible in business – positive steps that will help us to combat climate change while also creating new jobs, protecting our energy security and building sustainable future prosperity for our country.”

Climate Week’s founder Kevin Steele said: “Nexeon thoroughly deserves to be awarded this prestigious accolade. The ability to store larger amounts of energy in a stable battery will have significant implications for a whole range of technologies. Nexeon’s silicon anode will enable more effective use of renewable energy sources, and products from laptops to electric cars will run even longer on a single charge.”

Nexeon has been given two major accolades at this year’s Rushlight Awards, including the overall Clean Energy Award. This award recognises the progress made by Nexeon in developing silicon-based anodes for next generation lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries.

Nexeon also won the Powered Transport Award – given for the most significant advancement leading to commercial development of cleaner transport and a significantly improved embedded environmental footprint.

These achievements for technology and innovation achievements are all the remarkable as Nexeon won two similar Rushlight awards two years ago. The Rushlight Awards are the only awards for technology developers across the whole cleantech spectrum, and Nexeon was in the company of strong competition from several sectors including the production and usage of energy, fuel, power generation, waste and water.

Recognition for Nexeon comes for its work in enabling the replacement of carbon anodes in Li-ion batteries with silicon, resulting in increased energy density and longer time between charges. This development can speed up the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, as well as reducing disposal issues associated with single use cells in consumer applications. Another important target application of the technology is the storage of off-grid energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

This year, the awards were presented at a black tie event at Church House, Westminster, attended by over 150 senior representatives from industry, government and the UK science base. Collecting the awards for Nexeon, Dr Bill Macklin, CTO said: “We are naturally delighted that the significance of the whole team’s achievements has been recognized. Our technical progress is being accompanied by strong commercial traction in global markets.”

Nexeon recently announced that it had begun a collaboration with a global tier one automotive OEM with a view to optimising the company’s technology for electric vehicle applications, and last year raised £40 million for the establishment of a 250 tonnes/pa manufacturing facility.

Nexeon will be represented by Dr Scott Brown who is well experienced in dealing with Japanese corporations, having lived and worked there for several years. Among the technology streams to be discussed are green ICT and energy management systems, including introducing Smart Grid Technology and Smart Community to reduce CO2 emissions.

Meetings and site visits will be held in Osaka and Tokyo, as well as networking with leading Japanese corporations such as: Panasonic, Sharp, Hitachi, Fujitsu and NTT.

The joint development agreement, which is worth ‘several million pounds’, will see the two companies co-operate in the development and evaluation of Nexeon’s silicon materials. These are designed to replace carbon as the anode of Li-ion batteries. Silicon has major advantages over carbon for vehicle batteries, being capable of delivering a significantly greater power to weight performance, and delivering more energy between charges.

Scientists at Nexeon and their OEM partner will be able to modify the structural properties of the special silicon materials to achieve the best balance of properties for electric vehicle use. Capabilities such as energy stored, time between charges and peak available current can be adjusted by modifications to the proprietary production process.

Nexeon moved to a new, larger site in 2010 and has now completed commissioning of a major new pilot plant that will be the focus for much of the optimisation work. The plant is an important asset, allowing the Nexeon team to simulate the production processes seen in full scale battery manufacture, and to gain realistic costing data.

“This is an important step for silicon anode technology in the automotive sector”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon. “We plan to work with leading partners with the capability to introduce our products directly into their supply chain. In automotive, being able to reduce the ‘range anxiety’ factor will allow a much faster adoption of EVs in many countries.”

Nexeon recently announced plans to build a 250 tonne/annum manufacturing facility in the UK and has raised £55 million in total, giving it the capability of commercial levels of materials supply.

This is the second year running that Nexeon has been listed in the prestigious Cleantech Connect ‘Ones to Watch’ listing for leading edge technology companies. The listing is published by leading investment banking firm GP Bullhound. Andre Shortell, Partner, GP Bullhound, and a member of the Judging Panel, said: “Cleantech is such a fast moving space, and there are many innovative players entering each year. We have found the quantity and the quality of this year’s entries to be extremely high.  It speaks volumes about the coming of age of a number of Cleantech sectors.”

Nexeon is attracting high profile attention through its development of next generation lithium-ion rechargeable battery technology, and has demonstrated Li-ion batteries with double the capacity and with better recharge cycle-life than currently available commercial batteries. Nexeon already has joint development or materials evaluation agreements in place with a number of major global OEMs and battery companies, with a view to adoption of the technology in their sectors.

Earlier this year, the Company raised £40million from its investors including Imperial Innovations, and announced plans to establish UK manufacturing operations to produce its silicon anode material in commercial volumes of 250 tonnes/year.

“We are naturally delighted to be given this important accolade”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon last night. “It is a very important time for us as the application potential for our technology is now very clear in several sectors including automotive, consumer electronics and off-grid energy storage.”

The BEEA Best Design Team Award category recognises criteria such as the degree of innovation applied, as well as how well the design team met the project milestones and the selection and application of technology.

Nexeon’s anode technology is based on silicon which is a naturally superior material for this application, but which brings challenges of dimensional stability. This is where the Nexeon team has triumphed by producing silicon morphologies which are stable and allow increased cell capacity with hundreds of charge cycles and practical discharge rates, as required by applications ranging from cell phones, laptops and many other consumer devices to electric vehicles and the storage of renewable energy.

Commenting at the award ceremony in London yesterday, Dr Scott Brown, CEO, said: “I am immensely proud of our scientists and engineers, who have really pushed forward the frontiers of what is possible. At the same time, we have materials under evaluation with “tier one” battery companies with plans for commercialisation in the near future.”

In July, Nexeon closed a £40 million funding round and announced plans to create a manufacturing capability for silicon-based battery materials of up to 250 tonnes per annum.

Rechargeable lithium-ion battery technology has received a huge boost with the investment of £40 million in Nexeon. The Series C investment was led by existing investor Imperial Innovations Group and included Invesco Perpetual; both organisations are existing investors.

Nexeon plans to use the new funding to establish a world class manufacturing facility, scaling up the production of its latest silicon anode materials to around 250 tonnes per annum, representing a commercial supply level. Use of silicon anodes in Li-ion batteries produces a significantly higher performance and overcomes the limitations of present-day technology. Batteries with higher energy density can offer longer time between charges, higher power output, smaller size or a combination of these benefits. They are eagerly awaited for application in cell phones, laptops and many other consumer devices, as well as having important application in electric vehicles and in storage of renewable energy.

The latest funding brings the total raised by Nexeon to £55 million, and will allow the company further to accelerate application development and to increase support to its customers. The investment comes at an ideal time for Nexeon as strong progress is being made in commercial negotiations and customer-led projects. Customer traction is now being gained with major global companies in the fields of consumer electronics and automotive in particular.

Nexeon’s technology has reached unprecedented levels of performance in the last year, and the company recently announced that it had it produced sample cells with significantly higher capacity for their size than the best current commercial equivalents. As Nexeon expands the scope of its activities it will be looking to create and fill a number of key commercial, technical and supply chain positions.

“This is the next step in an amazing journey for this exciting UK start up”, says Nexeon Chairman Dr Paul Atherton, who founded the company back in 2005 with Professor Mino Green of Imperial College. “It’s a superb example of UK high value manufacturing involving sophisticated advanced materials, and this funding will enable Nexeon to establish the first in a series of manufacturing plants that will be needed to serve demand worldwide.”

“We are naturally delighted at the support shown by our investors who see the potential of our silicon anode technology and the excellent progress being made by our team”, said Dr Scott Brown, CEO of Nexeon. “With the strong financial backing of Innovations and Invesco Perpetual, we are well placed and very much on track to meet our customers’ needs and to achieve our commercial ambitions.”

Susan Searle, Imperial Innovations’ CEO, said: “This new funding round will enable Nexeon to scale up its production facilities, in keeping with Innovations’ strategy to accelerate the development of its advanced portfolio companies, and to stay with those companies for longer. We are privileged to work alongside Nexeon’s world class team as they continue the development of their battery technology and set up a leading edge manufacturing facility.”

Last month, Nexeon was presented with the Green Technology award at Venturefest in recognition of the company’s innovative technology and demonstrable commercial potential.