Honeywell partners with Exide Energy to automate lithium-ion gigafactory

Industrial automation solutions provider Honeywell on Thursday announced that it has secured a contract to provide building automation solutions to Exide Energy Solutions Limited (EESL), a fully owned subsidiary of Exide Industries Ltd, one of India’s largest battery makers. The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed.

As part of this partnership, Honeywell will equip EESL with digital solutions to help improve operational efficiency and deliver faster incident response, energy savings and increased security for phase one of its new 80-acre lithium-ion Gigafactory campus in Bengaluru. Key to this will be Honeywell’s Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI) platform, which will provide an integrated view, centralised monitoring and control of building management across the Gigafactory campus.

“By helping Exide Energy make their new lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility more safe, secure and automated, we are supporting the efficient production of batteries that power the future of electric vehicles,” Atul Pai, Vice President and General Manager, Building Automation, Honeywell India said in a statement.

Mandar Deo, CEO of Exide Energy, said, “Honeywell’s automation and safety solutions align with our vision to create the most technologically advanced and sustainable unit for manufacturing Li-ion cells.

The Gigafactory is expected to be completed in 2025 and will be Bengaluru’s first multi-gigawatts-hour lithium-ion cell manufacturing facility. It will produce lithium-ion batteries to help address the growing global demand for electric vehicles, Honeywell said in a statement.

In July, Honeywell signed a long-term agreement with Air India, a subsidiary of Tata Group, to provide Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) aftermarket support for both existing and new fleets. The partnership aims at lowering unplanned maintenance costs and enhancing aircraft availability and dispatch reliability.

Prior, Honeywell and PwC India, one of the world's largest consulting firms entered into a strategic partnership to accelerate enterprise digitalisation projects as well as make companies better prepared for future challenges.