Battery has power to make millions

If all goes well on New York's Nasdaq stock exchange next year, Auckland entrepreneur Robin Johannink believes he will make more New Zealanders into millionaires than anyone before him.

Mr Johannink plans to raise $US120 million ($293 million) from the January listing of Ilion Corporation, formerly Pacific Lithium.

He aims to develop a cheaper, more powerful lithium battery system that could make electric cars commercially viable and help to achieve the company's vision of "a world powered by renewable energy."

Mr Johannink believes that more than 1000 private investors - mostly New Zealanders - who have put $62 million into the company since it started in 1994, will see the value of their shares multiply overnight.

"By next January we will have created more millionaires than any other New Zealand company."

Such an attitude is ambitious for a business that employs just 40 people in Auckland and 20 in the United States. But it is the kind of global vision New Zealand needs to turn around 40 years of relative economic decline, dramatised lately by the crashing kiwi dollar.

Mr Johannink started out in his family's company, T & T Childrenswear, and ran other businesses.

"But there was no purpose in just making money. I wanted to do something more worthwhile. This opportunity came along with lithium, and I put a stake in the ground."

He raised $2.5 million and started building a lithium extraction plant in the Firth of Thames.

Then in 1995-96 the price of lithium plunged when a new source came into the market.

Pacific Lithium had to change tack completely. It shelved the Firth of Thames plant and refocused on producing the world's highest-quality lithium and battery materials, initially for cellphones and laptop computers.

Lithium products are lighter, cheaper and longer-lasting than traditional nickel-based batteries.

The company built a processing plant at Manukau and began a joint venture with a Chinese province that has the world's largest unexploited lithium resource.

Pacific now imports all its lithium carbonate, refines it, and exports 100 per cent of its output, mainly to Japanese lithium battery manufacturers.

This year, it signed a deal to acquire a Philadelphia company that has developed the technology for making cheaper battery cells for cellphones and other portable devices.

Pacific formed a joint venture with an Italian company, Eldor Corporation, in August to start manufacturing complete battery packs in Italy next year.

Long-term, the company sees the biggest prize as supplying power systems for electric cars and hybrid vehicles where petrol will be used to charge a battery.

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