About us Strategy
Ceres aims to play a central role in the global transition to clean, affordable energy to help tackle climate change and air pollution.
Ceres’ growth strategy is driven by licensing our technology to global OEM partners, and generating royalties as those partners achieve full-scale commercialisation. We therefore benefit from an asset-light business model with a favourable margin. Ceres is absolutely focused on the needs and expectation of our licensees, for whom operational excellence, added value, and robust delivery are key. Alongside this, we are excited by the challenges of scaling up, growing our pilot manufacturing in the UK, and refining and adapting our technology for further and future applications.
“We are proud to be setting the pace and standards for solid oxide technology and playing our part in addressing the major challenges of climate change and air quality. We look forward to extending our technology to a widening portfolio of global partners and applications.”
Phil Caldwell CEO
Strategic Objectives
Commercial progress with new and existing customers
Description
We have customers at different levels of contract with us. Our objective is to bring as many as possible through to commercialisation.
We aim to delight our customers, both through the performance of our technology and our service to them.
Performance To Date
We focus on all our customers and licence agreements. To make sure we can deliver on their programmes, we have expanded our engineering team to support them.
Planned Future Actions
We will continue to add new customers and focus on delivering on existing programmes.
Establish SteelCell® technology as the industry standard
Description
We aim to attract multiple system partners and OEMs to drive demand of the SteelCell® in volume. We can either accelerate their system designs with Ceres IP or rely on them to develop systems independently.
We are targeting world-class manufacturing partners in key regions to supply the SteelCell® to multiple system partners.
Performance To Date
We have developed a 5kW stack to feed higher power and a range of modular systems for different applications.
With our growing customer base we need to provide cell and stack capacity to meet our near-term customer programmes. We are therefore scaling up our UK production to meet their demand.
Planned Future Actions
We continue to create new systems with better performance and power output. We may also look to partner with system integrators to assist with different applications for our technology.
The additional manufacturing capacity created in our new facility in Redhill is due to come on stream in January 2020. We will also support our partner Bosch in building their initial manufacturing plant in Bamberg, Germany.
Maintain technology leadership
Description
We aim to establish our SteelCell® technology as the Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology of choice for the world’s leading OEMs, setting the standard within the industry. We also want to
retain leadership as a system developer.
We will also continue to innovate, exploring new applications for our core technologies and capabilities alongside our current fuel cell offering.
Performance To Date
We have developed the SteelCell® with the potential to be one of the most robust and lowest cost fuel-flexible fuel cells in the world.
We have a large and experienced team of electrochemists, scientists and engineers capable of innovating new products in new electrochemical applications.
Planned Future Actions
We will continue to develop our stacks and systems to further their maturity, performance, cost and lifetime.
We will continue trialling the 5kW SteelCell® stack in real-life applications to prove its maturity.
We will explore new applications for our technology in adjacent markets.
Link to KPIs
Business Model
Our licensing model focuses on being a high-margin, asset-light business.
We develop fuel cell technology that is licensed to OEM and manufacturing partners and Ceres receives payments through engineering services and upfront license fees. We secure future royalties on systems and stacks used in every product sold.
Key Performance Indicator
1
Revenue and other income, £m
We anticipate continued high-quality revenue growth going forward
Description
Stack manufacturing capacity from Ceres and its partners.
Link to strategy
We anticipate continued high-quality revenue growth going forwards.
2
Partners at joint development and licensing
System licenses will drive volume for our manufacturing partners
Description
Doosan and Bosch join Weichai and Miura as our licensing partners.
Link to strategy
System licensees will drive volume for our manufacturing partners.
3
Order book and pipeline, £m
Confidence of continued growth and commercialisation of technology
Description
Order book and pipeline at the date of signing the accounts. ‘Order book’ refers to confirmed contracted revenue and other income, while ‘pipeline’ is contracted revenue and other income which management estimate is contingent upon options not under the control of Ceres.
Link to strategy
Gives the Company confidence that it can continue to grow and approach commercialisation.
4
Overall manufacturing capacity, kW
Manufacturing capacity from Ceres and its partners supports customer programmes
Description
Stack manufacturing capacity from Ceres and its partners.
Link to strategy
The capacity helps customer programmes to achieve their goals, and we expect this to increase next year as our Redhill plant and Bosch’s facility come on stream.
5
Power density
Key focus of development to drive improvements in cost, power and efficiency
Description
Improvement since 2012 at cell level. The power density has been indexed with the baseline being the 2012 technology release to customers.
Link to strategy
This is a key focus of our development which can translate into improvements in cost, power and efficiency.