Cebi News

MES DEA S.A. sold to FZ SONICK S.A.

An advanced technology for electric motors, the back-up of energy and to give the  maximum of performance to the systems of energy generation from renewable sources.

 

 

“To point with decision on the clean energy with the technologies of latest generation”: this is the base of the new strategic agreement signed by the FIAMM Group and MES-DEA, a Swiss company specialized in the production of sodium-nickel-chloride batteries for electric vehicles.


An agreement which comes to the joint creation of a new and important company: On February 1st, 2010 FZ Sonick SA is officially constituted, its head office will be in Switzerland, at Stabio (Canton Ticino) where MES-DEA is already operating with a factory and a staff of 190 persons. The present production capacity is roughly 90 megawatt-hour per year, meant to increase up to 170 in the next 5 years. The budget of the fixed turnover for 2010 is 25 millions of Euro.

 


The new company will be directed in the role of managing directors by Nicola Cosciani, director of the Strategic Development Department of FIAMM and Cesare Sinigaglia, general manager of MES-DEA. << After years of steady growth in the automotive sector, we have deemed strategic to
extent our view by pointing also on the stationary use of the ZEBRA batteries. In this point of view the signed agreement with the FIAMM Group allows us to enter as a leader in a sector which will be determining in the next future and in which we expect that ZEBRA will cover the role of one of the reference technologies for the energy storage requested by the modern market – declares Cesare Sinigaglia – Managing Director of FZ Sonick and Managing Director of the CEBI Group>>


<<This initiative is fully part of the strategic vision of the FIAMM Group and confirms the choice to extent its business horizon in the field of the clean and renewable energies, demonstrating a company philosophy that intends to conjugate concretely the industrial development with the technological progress and the respect for the environment – declares Stefano Dolcetta – Managing Director of the FIAMM Group>>


<<Joining the important technical results achieved by MES-DEA to the strong penetration of FIAMM in the markets of the energy storage, we expect that FZ Sonick SA will achieve in a short time results of absolute satisfaction both in terms of quality and profitability – declares Giuseppe Zanetti, President of the FIAMM Group.>> “Who presently operates in the field of the energy storage is in the middle of a quick technical evolution and of more and more challenging markets. FZ Sonick conjugates innovation, experience and knowledge of the requirements of the market and will give an answer to the needs of the sectors as the electric traction, the back-up of energy and will participate as a leader in the development of the sector of the generation and distribution of the energy produced by renewable sources – declares Nicola Cosciani – Managing Director of FZ Sonick and Director of the Strategic Development of the FIAMM Group. The new company is born having very solid roots in the experience of MES-DEA, a company constituted by an far-seeing Piedmontese entrepreneur, Carlo Bianco, who started to study the most efficient technologies for the electric motors already in the Eighties and who took over ten years ago the patents Daimler-Chrysler and AEG related to the salt batteries, managing with passion and expertise to industrialize and to massproduce this innovative battery. Since MES-DEA has carried out an important
development work of the product, meeting all the requirements of a market in rapid growth: the salt batteries made in Switzerland, sold with the brand ZEBRA, are presently used in electric buses in duty in several European capital cities and towns of the United States: the request regarding the cars is also increasing (the first European fleet of electric vehicles assigned to the postal service will be equipped by the ZEBRA batteries: LA POSTE in France has ordered some hundred vehicles which will enter in duty already in 2010!) but also the possibilities in other sectors such as the aeronaval and the railway sector are remarkable. The constitution of FZ Sonick SA concretely confirms the success of the ambitious project started five years ago by the Strategic Development of FIAMM, which has believed in the great potentiality of the salt batteries: a technology which presents considerable benefits in ecological terms (very low environmental impact, zero emissions) and in efficiency (very long life, high specific energy, low cost of the raw materials) so that it is now considered the most concrete, reliable and efficient solution to cover the requirements of sectors in which the traditional lead-acid batteries are not appropriate.


After the investment in the project of study for the industrial applications of these batteries and having achieved a deep and complete knowledge of the sodium-nickel system, also in cooperation with CNR, the FIAMM Group enters therefore as a industrial leader also in this technology for the energy storage, with the intention to meet in a still more ample way the increasing requirements of its markets.

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