Flash Battery: a perfectly charged company
Flash Battery was founded in 2012 by Marco Righi and Alan Pastorelli, who are today respectively the CEO and CTO, with the mission to supply lithium batteries to manufacturers of industrial machines and vehicles requiring a high degree of customisation. Flash Battery is the best-selling lithium battery in Italy; it is also the fastest-charging model and requires no maintenance, thanks to its proprietary remote monitoring system.
In the beginning
Flash Battery’s story goes back a long away: Marco Righi grew up surrounded by electronics and technology. In 1985, the year of his birth, Marco’s father founded a company that produced high-frequency battery chargers, a cutting-edge innovation at the time, which within 10 years became the industry leader in Europe.
From a young age, Marco showed great interest in electronics, actively participating in the business and, driven by his curiosity for new technologies, he later took on a role in the R&D department with the dream of one day running the company alongside his father and driving it on to ever more ambitious achievements.
A sudden shock
In 2006, there was an unexpected change of direction.
While in California for work, Marco received a call from his father telling him that he had just sold the family business.
In an instant, his long-held dream appeared to have vanished.
The solution? Don’t give up and stay focused! Marco resigned, completed his university studies and embraced new job opportunities, while keeping alive his passion for electronics, which he continued to nurture in his spare time.
In his spare time, he continued to experiment.
A new opportunity
In 2009, he paid a visit to a friend working in the industrial electric vehicle manufacturing sector. It was there that Marco first came across the early lithium batteries imported from China.
The potential of the cells was very high but the limitations of the electronic systems that govern the battery pack quickly became clear: low quality, unreliability, and low quality. But this gave him an idea! By tackling the technical challenges and revolutionising the electronics that control the lithium batteries, it would be possible to get the electric vehicles sector off the ground, introducing some real innovation for industrial applications.
From start-up to company: the birth of Kaitek
Having identified the core of the problem, Marco decided to involve his friend Alan Pastorelli, who shared his passion for electronics and who had, in the meantime, become an electronic engineer in the automotive sector. It was from this constant study that a solution emerged: the issue was not just the electronics, the lithium batteries also needed a reliable and efficient control system.
Marco’s garage was transformed into a research laboratory. Every evening and weekend they worked on developing the first prototype of the Flash Balancing System, the next-generation battery management system.
Their test rig was an electric Citroën Saxo which they bought from Milan Council for just €2500.
Marco Righi, CEO of Flash Battery, at the first headquarters of Kaitek Srl
Alan Pastorelli, CTO of Flash Battery, at the first headquarters of Kaitek Srl
Alan Pastorelli and Marco Righi at the new HQ in Sant'Ilario d'Enza
Marco Righi, CEO of Flash Battery, at the first headquarters of Kaitek Srl
Alan Pastorelli, CTO of Flash Battery, at the first headquarters of Kaitek Srl
Alan Pastorelli and Marco Righi at the new HQ in Sant'Ilario d'Enza
And that is how, in 2009, Marco and Alan began to design their lithium battery management system and, in 2012, they officially established Kaitek Srl. Initially the company produced control and management electronics for the existing batteries of customers, making them safer and more reliable. The two partners soon realised though that their added value lay in producing a complete battery pack.
It was this second “eureka moment” that led Marco and Alan to launch Flash Battery, a proper brand under which they would design and produce complete lithium batteries.
Flash Battery Srl, a company with an international outlook
In addition to being the name of the best-selling lithium battery brand in Italy, Flash Battery became the name of the company in 2020. The name was chosen to better communicate the key competitive advantage: charging speed.
Continuous research into proprietary electronics, combined with a consultancy-based approach and a strategic business vision, have enabled us in just a few years to establish ourselves as one of the leading European producers of lithium batteries for industrial applications.
With the change of company name, industrial operations also moved to a new state-of-the-art site designed according to sustainability criteria, on a 20,000 m² site with 1500 m² of offices and 3200 m² of production areas.
In 2023 the expansion of our commercial relationships and the desire to offer even more effective support, led us to open an operational site in the USA, in Houston, Texas. This enables us to provide rapid after-sales support to customers operating in the NAFTA market (North American Free Trade Agreement), strengthening business relationships that cross geographical barriers and time zones.
To support this internationalisation process and to meet the needs of an increasingly global market, we continue to invest in infrastructure and technology. In 2024, we added a further 2200 m² to the site opened in 2020, using this additional space to install an automated module assembly line with laser welding. It became the prismatic cell production line with the highest capacity in Italy.