You may know something the rest of us don't but my understanding is that as a partner in the Precept Fund, Steve Barber is still CEO of Oakridge. Of course, the other partners may not be too pleased with that costly debacle at Oakridge and may replace him. Time will tell. If another CEO is hired and Precept or others are willing to invest significant capital in the organization, you are correct in that anything is possible.
However, if Oakridge wants to do business in the USA ever again, they will have to settle all the lawsuits brought against them by former employees and suppliers. And they will have to hire a whole new team of battery technologists, not an easy tasks for a company with such a bad reputation.
The key will be the capital investment required to staff a plant, purchase equipment and parts and build a distribution network. We are talking of tens of millions of dollars, even for something as simple as pack assembly. As a reference point, SAFT spent $200 millions to build their lithium ion battery factory in Jacksonville. It is rather large, 250,000 sq. ft , but it gives a good indication of the kind of capital required to play in this game. And this was just the cost of the factory, not R&D, marketing, distribution networks, supplier development etc. I would guess that $40,000,000 would be required to make serious attempt at relaunching Oakridge, maybe more.
Barber told people that he had the $25 million from the Leclanche sale and that Precept was willing to invest tens of millions more. That's how he got people to quit their jobs and move to Florida. Yet, the whole summer of 2016 was spent trying to raise money from investors, notably a former US Army general who was rumored to be tight with a Saudi prince, according to former employees.
According to the people who worked there, Steve Barber really did want to manufacture batteries but he overestimated his ability to raise funds, hired people before he was ready and used the team as props for his fund raising efforts. When he failed, the house of cards came crashing down.
AI
