Australian battery manufacturer to fast-track production after pre-IPO fund raising

Australian owned and operated energy storage systems designer and manufacturer RedEarth Energy Storage has completed a $A12 million pre-IPO funding round ahead of the company’s ASX listing in 2022.

RedEarth said on Monday the funding round was “significantly oversubscribed” due to consistently impressive financial growth over the past 13 quarters, with over 60% quarter-over-quarter growth reported thanks to the expansion of distributed energy storage adoption serving as “a very significant tailwind.”

RedEarth plans to use the influx of cash to further accelerate its local battery manufacturing, sales, and marketing efforts, as well as to fund research and development to finalise its electricity monetisation technologies ahead of listing on the ASX.

The listing, according to RedEarth, will see one of the few Australian-owned and made energy storage options listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

“We are committed to our vision of continuing to empower our customers with new possibilities of not only saving money by switching to solar electricity but making money,” said Charles Walker, co-founder and CEO of RedEarth. “This is unique in an industry dominated by partial foreign offerings.”

Based in Queensland and founded in 2013, RedEarth offers a range of battery products including its BlackMax Solar Power System.

Launched in September, the BlackMax Solar Power System is one of the first-ever Australian-made off-grid battery energy storage system (BESS) to be approved by Australia’s Clean Energy Council (CEC), and the most advanced and compliant Australian-made off-grid system on the CEC list.

RedEarth is also continuing to develop its Personal Power Plant (PPP), which it unveiled in December of 2020. At the time, RedEarth had partnered with Byron Bay-based Enova Community Energy to roll out 100% renewable PPPs that could be linked, monitored, and controlled, to create a community power plant.

The company has also been negotiating with a range of other businesses to establish similar community-based PPPs which, once live, would allow RedEarth customers to generate and sell, trade or gift their stored electricity to other users on RedEarth’s platform.

“The way the world generates, distributes and uses electricity is undergoing fundamental change right now,” said co-founder and chief technical officer Chris Winter.

“RedEarth is at the forefront of that change with our fully vertically integrated offerings for both on-grid and off-grid customers.

The funding round was led by the Ord Minnett Private Opportunities Fund, managed by Melbourne-based wealth management group Ord Minnett.