We are proud to share that the first national battery facility in the Netherlands – the Open Battery Industrialisation Centre (OBIC) – is coming to the province of North Brabant. The Province is investing €1.25 million to establish this leading facility, strengthening Brabant’s position at the heart of Europe’s energy transition.

TNO at Holst Centre is proud to contribute to this powerful ecosystem alongside the Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM), Brainport Eindhoven and industrial partners including VDL ETS. OBIC will be the first Dutch facility where companies can test and scale their battery technologies towards industrial production. This is a crucial step for accelerating innovation and building a strong European battery value chain.

As Martijn van Gruijthuijsen, Deputy for Economy, Knowledge and Talent Development of the Province of North Brabant, states:

“Scaling up is essential. Many companies develop battery components but lack the opportunity to demonstrate performance, reliability and safety in large-scale produced cells. OBIC provides the facilities and expertise to prove this convincingly and accelerate industrialisation.”

Testing and optimising

At OBIC, new battery concepts will be tested for performance and lifetime, while production processes will be optimised to ensure consistent quality. This builds critical production and integration knowledge, accelerating innovations that strengthen the competitiveness of the Netherlands and Europe in a market currently dominated by Asian players.

The facility will be located at the Automotive Campus (Helmond), a strategic hub within Brabant’s mobility and innovation ecosystem, focused on electrification, decarbonisation, digitisation and sustainable mobility solutions.

With additional funding of over €12.2 million from the National Growth Fund, this initiative represents a major step toward strengthening Europe’s technological leadership in batteries,  essential for electric mobility, grid stability, and the transition to sustainable energy.

At Holst Centre, we look forward to working with partners across the value chain to turn breakthrough battery innovations into scalable industrial reality.

You can read the Dutch press release from the Province of North Brabant here: https://www.brabant.nl/actueel/nieuws/eerste-nationale-batterijfaciliteit-noord-brabant/