Cathy, I don't see that we 'have a lot more waiting ahead' at all. The visitor appears to have spoken out of both sides of his mouth: first he expects a big order soon, then says they have to replace equipment before they can handle a big order. He had it right the first time.
What the company has been telling people is simply that Hanil was able to order the latest technology, and that further equipment orders for the NI plant will be able to take advantage of this as well. Further, since they don't have any packaging equipment for the large-format cells (from line 1), and Hanil has now satisfactorily tested some new German equipment, then NI can comfortably order and use the same. This doesn't mean they need to replace the packaging equipment currently in place for line 2 (cellphone cells), and that's not what the visitor quoted Roy Wright as saying.
More likely is that Roy complained the same as Lev has, about not having a newer machine for the large-format cells. This will be rectified with the line 4 machine which they've said they'll take delivery of when they raise more capital. Lev quoted this machine as having a maximum output rate of 40 laptop cells/min (vs 10/min from the current line 1, which so far has only been publicly stated to have been run at 6/min). Even so, at 6 cells/min from line 1, they can still produce 100,000 laptop cells in two weeks' time.
(N.B. a laptop requires 3 or 4 of these cells, to make a complete battery; these cells are 4"x4"x4mm in size, with 3.8v output, so you attach 3 or 4 of them in series to get the voltage needed for the display.)
In summary, based on their production capability, I don't think we'll need to wait to start hearing about 'modest' sized orders of 100,000 laptop cells. The Alliant production verifies that they have the personnel in place to continue producing and stockpiling the laptop cells now. |
