Independent technical due diligence, site verification and market intelligence on batteries, hydrogen and the materials behind them, for the people who invest in them, trade them and buy them.
Money is moving quickly into batteries, hydrogen and the materials behind them. The people deciding where it goes are usually strong on markets and finance, but they rarely have anyone beside them who has taken one of these technologies from the lab to a production line.
So claims about yield, capacity, cost and readiness are often taken on trust. When those claims are wrong, the cost appears later as scrap, delay and write-downs. Fraunhofer's work on new battery factories puts scrap at 15 to 30% in the first years, with production starting more than seven months late on average.
I have spent more than twenty years on the making side. I helped take a fuel cell from development to pilot production, led a national research programme on battery electrode manufacturing, and co-founded a start-up that makes electrodes a new way. Pennine puts that experience on the side of the people who fund, trade, buy and regulate these technologies.
Pennine exists so that anyone committing money to an energy technology can test the engineering first, with someone who has built it.Denis Cumming, founder
For investors, funds and corporate development teams
An independent review of a technology, plant or company before you invest, acquire or sign. I test the process route, the capacity and yield claims, the cost assumptions and the scale-up plan, and judge whether the team can deliver it.
For trading desks, offtakers and lenders
A visit to a plant, pilot line or supplier to establish what is actually there and running. I record equipment, throughput, quality systems and stock with dated photographs and documents, and set out what is ready, what is not, and what would have to change.
For research, trading and investment teams
Briefings that connect changes on the factory floor to material demand and cost. Typical subjects are dry electrode processing and PTFE demand, the shift to LFP and sodium-ion and what it means for nickel and cobalt, recycling yields and black mass supply, and the EU battery rules to 2031.
For manufacturers and materials suppliers
A second opinion when a powder, coating or ceramic process moves from pilot to production, in batteries, fuel cells and electrolysers, or in other industries with the same problems. I find where scrap and delay are likely to come from and specify the tests that will show it. I do not run a lab, but I choose labs and interpret their results.
We talk through the decision you face and what you need to know.
One page setting out the scope, the deliverable and the date.
I sign your NDA, or provide one, before any documents change hands.
A written report you can share internally, and a call to go through it.
I am also co-founder of a dry electrode start-up. I declare that interest, and any other, before a project starts, and I do not review direct competitors.
Batteries. Electrode materials and manufacturing, cell production, safety and recycling.
Hydrogen. Solid oxide fuel cells and high-temperature electrolysis.
Powders and ceramics. Mixing, coating, compaction and sintering, in any industry that depends on them.
Development Engineer, Ceres Power. Materials and process development for metal-supported solid oxide fuel cells, from single cells to pilot stack production.
PhD, Imperial College London. Materials for solid oxide fuel cells.
Research Associate, University of Sheffield. Electrolysis of steam and carbon dioxide to make synthetic fuels, and high-temperature piezoelectric ceramics.
Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield. Sheffield lead for Nextrode, the Faraday Institution's £12M programme on battery electrode manufacturing, with six universities and 14 industrial partners. Member of the National Physical Laboratory's technical advisory board on battery standards.
Founder, Pennine Materials Intelligence, Nyon. Also co-founder and CTO of a dry electrode manufacturing start-up spun out of Sheffield.
If you face a decision that depends on how a battery, fuel cell or material is made, write to me with a few lines about it. I reply within two working days.
Nyon, Switzerland. Working in English, with clients across Europe.