Sealence Will Open a Gigafactory in Italy to Produce Batteries

Sealence, an Italian scaleup known for its DeepSpeed nautical jets, is setting its sights on battery production, a sector, moreover, where it is already present thanks to its acquisition in February 2022 of eDriveLAB, a startup from Emilia Romagna that took its first steps as a spin-off from the University of Parma.

The SafeLi Giga Factory project starts with the 83 kWh SafeLi lithium-ion battery, already in production, which is characterized by its high power output of 240kW and its ability to be recharged to 80 percent in just 12 minutes.

“Our SAFE-Li 83 kWh Naval Approval battery is a powerhouse of technology and is rapidly becoming a benchmark in the industry, compared to other products that are perhaps less expensive but also much less performing. On the safety front then the SAFE-Li is truly a game-changer, meaning it is the first battery explicitly designed to be fireproof,” CEO William Gobbo told Electric Motor News during the Electric & Hybrid Marine Expo in Amsterdam.

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Sealence Gigafactory Project

Sealence has been working for months on the SAFE-Li Giga Factory project that aims not only to meet internal needs but also has the goal of reducing the lead time of batteries that are being demanded by more and more customers, even in sectors other than marine.

Battery production also takes place on an in-house production line at Sealence, which will then be moved inside the Giga Factory as soon as it is operational, probably as early as 2024.

The first production lines for the nautical jet have been operational for months already and the first Sealence powertrains have been shipped to end customers since late 2022.

“The next step we are going to take is purely industrial in nature, which is to structure processes and automate some steps in order to increase volumes to gigawatts by 2025,” Gobbo adds.

Financial collection

In 2022, Sealence had issued a new “SEALENCE SAFE 2022” €30M convertible bond, already partly subscribed, which, at the moment, is being discussed with three different Institutional parties interested in financing the operation up to €20M.

Recall that the company had successfully closed two equity crowdfunding campaigns, both on Crowdfundme. The first one in October 2019, with a €450,000 raising followed in August 2020 by the placement of a €500,000 converting minibond, which had been offered to all members, including the 126 investors of the first campaign.

The second campaign had been closed the following year, in December 2020, raising €2.9 million based on a pre-money valuation of €33.5 million. The campaign was part of a larger 7 million round, structured for the remainder by the issuance of a converting bond, which was then successfully concluded.

During the first exercise window (December 2021-January 2022), Sealence warrants had been converted for a countervalue of about 751,000 euros, to which another 600,000 euros of SFPs had been added, for a total of more than 1.3 million euros in total funding. In this case, the startup’s pre-money valuation had been €260 million.

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(Featured image by Ludovic Gauthier via Unsplash)

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