Wildest West
Last week we were Carefully Barging.
Apparently the next thing to barge into was geography.
London has served us well as an address. Increasingly less so as a centre of gravity.
The company now stretches from Delaware, over Aberdeen all the way to Kerala. Thus our growing network of research, manufacturing and technical relationships make our original postcode look increasingly accidental. To keep our UK origin and home however, we decided to solidify our standing on his majesties Island; By moving up towards the West midlands.
Structure
The administrative sequence that has occupied far too many paragraphs of this Infoblog continues its unfortunate habit of finishing one step at a time. This week's authority discussions concluded successfully. The remaining position was agreed, the banking side is informed and the final release continues through the same basic sequence:
Signatures → Electronic Release → Implementation.
At the time of writing, we are waiting for the release itself. We now have the intended execution before 1 October in writing.
Useful. Hitting the one year mark on this bureaucratic travesty; We have also learned not to confuse writing with cleared bank balances. Our rule therefore remains unchanged: We'll call it completed when the state and bank does. There is an uncomfortable anniversary attached to this one. Around the beginning of October, the underlying blockage will have remained unresolved for roughly a year.
That is ridiculous to us too.
And there are now consequences to the sequencing.
The banking release and outstanding PSC confirmation are the remaining dependencies around concluding the accounts, associated share issue and surrounding corporate work. The current timing also puts us on the wrong side of an HMRC timing point. Too bad. Yet, not the end of anything.
It simply means part of next week's work will have to be resolved retrospectively rather than pretending the calendar moved.
So next week is likely to be unusually un-glamorous:
Release → PSC → Accounts → Share Issue → Filings → Obligations.
Bureaucracy week. At this point it has earned one. More interestingly, we are now preparing the next geographic iteration of KCM itself. Our London base increasingly sits southeast of much of the work we actually intend to build. The Manufacturing Technology Centre sits in Coventry. Birmingham remains important across engineering, software and talent. Our people are increasingly distributed through the Midlands. Robert Gordon University and the emerging Scottish manufacturing direction pull the map considerably further north. A more central Midlands base therefore makes considerably more operational sense for the next phase. London isn't being deleted. We're just seeing other postcodes.
Product
Mk-X remains around the Stage II → Stage III transition.
The physical core, substrate/electrode architecture and mechanical integration remain the foundation for the electronics and validation layer that follows:
Substrate + electrodes
Compression architecture
Mechanical integration
Rectification + reference circuitry
Reproducible validation
Or, considerably shorter:
Material → Core → Electronics → Validation → Pilot. // REPEAT
The Manufacturing Technology Centre programme remains positioned around, with mobilisation and preliminary concepting formally raised and the kickoff cost settled in our next invoice run. For months MTC existed in these updates as planning, validation architecture and a future pilot route. It now has a project number, defined milestones and paperwork waiting to turn into engineering. Reality before acceleration. Repeatability before scale.
A Midlands operating base increasingly puts KCM where manufacturing, engineering partners and the next build cycle actually are, rather than where the letterhead happened to begin.
R&D Focus
Last week, Robert Gordon University represented the beginning of an incredibly streamlined KTP route. This week it acquired an actual technical shape. Focus on: Batteries.
The current R&D outline focuses on optimising KCM's piezoelectric material platform for integration into advanced battery systems, including:
growth-substrate experimentation
crystal lattice and geometry characterisation
growth-process optimisation
battery-relevant electromechanical assessment
hybrid battery integration
commercial and manufacturing viability
A proposed Scottish Innovation Voucher would create a defined experimental package around substrate selection, crystal behaviour, process sensitivity, battery-relevant performance and preliminary integration feasibility.
The objective is not to claim a finished hybrid battery.
It is something much more useful at this stage: Utility Evidence.
Initial Scottish R&D → Experimental Evidence → Battery-focused KTP → Integrated Development → Industrialisation
The collaboration outline now explicitly considers whether successful technical work could eventually support piezoelectric-material and hybrid-battery manufacturing capability in Scotland, including synthesis, pilot manufacturing and potentially a dedicated production footprint around Aberdeen. Moving to integrate the results of our Student led University of Birmingham projects through establishment of our own AI/Software department still within Q4 of this year; with the results being composed into papers to be published and presented at conferences - more on that soon.
As an overview of our current UK based academic collaboration;
Birmingham → systems, engineering and people
Aberdeen → batteries and KTP development
Newcastle → longer-horizon energy-device work
Research programmes are supposed to end.
Good questions apparently don't.
Research → System → People → Publication → Continuation
Ecosystem
The outside calendar has developed a battery problem as well. Conveniently.
Innovate UK Business Connect has opened a UK cohort route to Battery Innovation Days 2026 in Stockholm, running from 10 to 13 November.
The programme is aimed at collaborations around upcoming Horizon Europe battery calls, particularly:
next-generation battery concepts and advanced materials
battery recycling
sustainable and competitive cell manufacturing
long-duration battery energy-storage systems
Which, given what we do in Aberdeen, is rather difficult to ignore. The application window runs into early October, with the programme designed around European partner-building, Horizon Europe consortium development and the broader battery ecosystem. London, meanwhile, has chosen this exact moment to keep calling. Apparently quite literally. The Business Show London has reserved us a ticket for its 11–12 November return to ExCeL. Not exactly a strategic milestone, but excellent comic timing for a company preparing to leave London.
Tech Nation, together with Sage, invited us to its October programme on Scaling Responsibly in the AI Era. Given the work emerging from Birmingham around AI engineering intelligence, evidence systems and our internal AI capability, we have also asked whether KCM can contribute beyond simply occupying a chair. We have enough chairs.
The UK National Quantum Technologies Showcase has now opened its organised one-to-one matchmaking ahead of the November 6 event at the Business Design Centre, allowing participating companies to pre-book discussions with industry and technology counterparts rather than relying entirely on conference-floor serendipity. That makes the Showcase considerably more useful to us.
The Eureka / Xecs / SMART events discussed last week remains relevant around international electronics and advanced-manufacturing collaboration, while Future Aero in Munich continues into December.
World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence also continues through the background, moving next into geo-economics, resilience and AI in financial services after this week's Chief Economists Outlook. And the wider AI direction remains deliberately boring in principle:
Use it where it genuinely improves engineering, evidence and operations.
Keep humans where judgement still matters. You cannot outsource what you cannot do yourself.
Operations
This is probably where the week becomes easiest to understand in Summary.
Structure: Start of preparation to move from London toward a more central Midlands base.
Banking: authority position agreed; Authority release and subsequent bank implementation remain outstanding.
Execution: pre-1-October completion remains the written target.
Accounts: fully prepared around the wider position, with final completion tied to the remaining sequence.
Share Issue: follows the accounts/PSC position rather than another provisional cap-table illustration.
HMRC: one timing point is now likely to require retrospective handling.
Companies House: prior strike-off stopped; filing remains an immediate priority.
MTC: Project 3007045 positioned for mobilisation and preliminary concepting following the funding release.
RGU: battery-focused R&D package refined toward a Scottish Innovation Voucher and subsequent KTP.
UoB: IP transfer related projects concluded; student continuation moving through individual terms.
Newcastle: longer-term energy-device discussions remain open.
Research: Open Evidence Map moving toward possible external publication.
Team: software and research roles are progressing from provisional intent toward negotiated structures.
Stockholm: Battery Innovation Days route now joins the battery and advanced-materials calendar.
AI: internal capability continues beyond the MSc programme; Tech Nation dialogue added.
Ecosystem: Vienna, Stockholm, London and Munich sit across the forward calendar.
Mk-X: Stage II → Stage III transition continues.
There is still unfinished business. But that’s business.
Outlook
September started with us trying to find where things fit. Apparently that includes us.
London made sense when KCM was mostly a structure, a small team and a large collection of intentions.
The next version increasingly lives elsewhere and depends on the ability to be closer to manufacturing. Closer to engineering.
Closer to the people doing the work. And, perhaps eventually, closer to Scotland. And closer to the Birmingham Airport that offers flights to Italy starting at 29 GBP. Jokes aside, that does not mean every academic discussion becomes a KTP, every R&D draft becomes a factory or every arrow on the map becomes a postcode.
It means the company is beginning to acquire geography for the same reason Mk-X acquires architecture:
Because the next stage requires it as much as the empowerment pending.
First, however, comes the paperwork. The banking release still needs to become usable and the shares still need issuing. Sorry to our Angels for keeping them waiting. And after nearly a year, we are entirely aware that another sentence saying almost there would deserve to be thrown back at us.
So we won't. Next week belongs to Solutions not claims. Regularise what slipped. Pay what needs paying. File what needs filing. Then get back to building. Reality and obligations have not always aligned.
They eventually have to. Last week we asked where the next unit of time earns its return.
This week we have a slightly better idea where to put it!
Energy. Time. The Future.
— The KCM Team 🚀
