CASE STUDIES
Developing Supply Chain Foundations for Agratas’ UK Battery Cell Facility
WHO WAS THE CUSTOMER & WHAT IS THEIR BACKGROUND?
Agratas is a newly founded subsidiary within the Tata group. They have set out to design, develop and manufacture high-quality, high-performance sustainable batteries to be applied across the mobility and energy sectors. Agratas has so far secured two anchor customers, Tata Motors and JLR, who will benefit from the innovative manufacturing facilities in the UK and India. Construction on Somerset site has began, with the groundworks taking place on the 308 acre site, with the first batteries coming off the production line in 2026.
WHAT WAS THE BRIEF & WHY WERE HSSMI BROUGHT IN?
In the absence of an in-house supply chain team being in place yet, HSSMI were brought in as a partner with extensive knowledge of battery supply chains and battery factory logistic operations.
The objectives of the project were as follows:
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- Develop Agratas’ understanding of the battery supply chain
- Analyse supply chain scenarios based on fundamentals and past project experience to assess the impact on building design and in-plant logistics operations
- Develop a facility masterplan for logistics to support RIBA 1 including space required, budgetary costs, and timescales.
WHAT DID HSSMI DO TO DELIVER THE RESULTS?
Develop Agratas’ understanding of the battery supply chain
HSSMI furnished Agratas with initial supply chain assumptions, applicable to the bespoke Agratas Bill of Material. HSSMI have vast experience across the battery sector and utilised this knowledge, strong supply chain fundamentals and relationships with suppliers to define potential suppliers, supplier manufacturing locations and final ship from sites, shipping formats, minimum order quantities and packaging. This provided Agratas with a robust baseline, grounded in reliable data with defined sources. From this baseline, we were able to develop the logistics masterplan and understand risks and opportunities within the supply chain.
Define likely scenarios based on fundamentals and past project experience
HSSMI developed a bespoke tool (PFEP+) to dynamically calculate a set of desired outputs (e.g. space required, pallet locations required, internal and external site traffic) for the inbound warehouse, outbound warehouse and service yard based on user inputs (e.g. bill of material, supplier location, freight format, packaging format). This enabled HSSMI to evaluate the impact of various supply chain scenarios on the intralogistics operations, warehousing and handling space, equipment, and cost.
The supply chain and logistic scenarios created were tailored to suit the unique demands of battery manufacturing logistics, encompassing intricate challenges such as challenging materials, high volume, highly automated assembly lines, and long distanced sourcing, among others.
The scenarios were analysed against storage requirements of hazardous materials, part quality, short term capital cost, operational costs, ease of phasing when scaling up production and safety considerations. A block layout was created for each scenario with estimated capital costs of equipment.
Develop a facility masterplan for logistics to support RIBA 1
HSSMI developed an overview of the logistics operations for the battery factory site. We reviewed various available solutions in order to recommend a robust strategy. This included centralised vs localised inbound and outbound warehousing, localised storage, material flow and storage equipment and service yard strategy. The masterplan recommendation was backed by industry benchmarks, operational and capital cost analysis and statistics to demonstrate efficiency.
WHAT WERE THE FINAL OUTPUTS & WHAT IMPACT HAS THIS MADE?
The final outputs were documented in a supply chain and logistics report that outlined all assumptions made, a tool handover, different scenarios for the service yard, inbound and outbound warehouse with HSSMI recommendation, building requirements, risks and opportunities in the supply chain and their impact to the logistics operation.
The Agratas team received thorough training on the use of the PFEP+ tool effectively. This has ensured the team can continue to use the tool to assess the impact to logistics of an ever-evolving supply chain, as the team charge ahead with sourcing raw materials and feedstocks.
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For all press, media or general enquiries, please contact David Stewart on david.stewart@hssmi.com
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