Battery and EV charger factory opens on Gold Coast

eLumina has officially opened its $20 million Manufacturing and Development Centre on the Gold Coast, which is geared towards strengthening Australia’s energy storage sector and helping to meet a rapidly increasing global demand for batteries. The new factory will produce 300 batteries and EV chargers a year while supporting up to 300 jobs on the Gold Coast.

eLumina is an Australian-owned company specialising in the manufacture of lithium battery energy storage systems and battery-integrated electric vehicle chargers.

“We are extremely proud to officially open our factory here in Yatala on the Gold Coast,” said the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Lisa Marsh. “We are ambitious to back 300 highly technical and sought-after jobs and we’re proud to partner with TAFE Queensland to support the training and pathways into these jobs.”

The CEO of the Tech Council of Australia, Damian Kassabgi, said that Queensland — particularly the Gold Coast — was emerging as a tech hotspot and now also a manufacturing hub.

“Our goal is to have 1.2 million tech workers in Australia by 2030 and we’re proud to partner with Australian organisations like eLumina whose jobs are supporting the renewable energy sector,” he said.

eLumina has also partnered with the Smart Energy Council, whose CEO John Grimes praised the company for being “truly innovative and applying cutting-edge practices to be the first in the country to manufacture community lithium batteries and EV chargers”.

With a key challenge for Australia’s EV market being connectivity, particularly in regional and rural areas, eLumina is partnering with electrical infrastructure company Addelec to support the deployment of its battery-integrated EV chargers.

General Manager at Addelec Chris McPherson said, “When we look globally, especially at places like Europe with a high uptake of EVs, they’re navigating smaller and more densely populated areas. When we zoom out to the sheer size of Australia, we need to take a different approach.”

By addressing the existing power challenges across Australia, McPherson said the companies hoped to see an uptake in EV users across the nation.

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