The company is developing the battery technology with an initial aim of cracking the drone and e-aviation market, but has bigger plans for the product which is lighter than the more common lithium-ion and has a greater cycle life.

In its annual report, Li-S said it was ahead of, or on track, with its development goals and was currently building a facility in Geelong that would support the production of battery cells “scaling us from tens to thousands of cells being produced each month”.

“This facility will allow us to start production of commercial cell tests for our partners over the next year,” Li-S chair Ben Spincer said.

“We have developed plans for a 200Mw-h facility in the coming years that will be able to produce commercial quantities of batteries for the first time and generate significant revenue.

“This is a significant standalone project that is not tied to the local of our phase 3 facilities in Geelong and we anticipate leveraging support from governments and partners as we progress our plans further.

“Into the longer term, we continue to anticipate lithium sulphur gigafactories on the horizon. However, it is increasingly evident that capacity increase is best served by technology licensing since we believe that re-tooling existing facilities is more viable than a greenfield new build.”

“We are a proud Australian business with our facilities in Victoria but we are conscious that we are operating in a dynamic global industry that will present opportunities to build our international capabilities and capacity alongside our core Australian R&D and know-how.”