Simon HackettRedflow Limited (ASX:RFX) on Friday announced senior management changes as the company prepares for the first deliveries of ZCell residential flow batteries in Australia.

The Redflow board has appointed Executive Chairman Simon Hackett as acting Chief Executive Officer while fellow board member Richard Aird was named acting Chief Operating Officer.

Redflow announced these appointments after Stuart Smith resigned as CEO following his successful outsourcing of the entire battery manufacturing process to Flex. Mr Smith joined Redflow in 2012.

Redflow director Howard Stack, who was chairman for much of that time, said the company was grateful for Stuart Smith's leadership during the past four years. "Stuart has led Redflow during a period in which it transformed a promising technology into a world-class battery and outsourced manufacturing to Flex," he said.

"The company is now embarking on the next phase of its development, and with Stuart's departure we have appointed Simon and Richard as acting CEO and acting COO to oversee the delivery of ZCell batteries in Australia and to identify the leadership team to deliver Redflow batteries to the world."

Redflow is an energy storage specialist that has developed the world's smallest zinc-bromine flow batteries, which are designed for stationary energy storage applications. These range from the ZCell home battery to ZBM batteries for commercial, telecommunications and grid-scale deployment.

Redflow has achieved a number of major milestones this year which include:

• Completing a successful and oversubscribed capital-raising in February
• Launching the ZCell residential energy storage system in March
• Implementing turnkey outsourced battery manufacture with Flex last month
• Developing a Battery Management System (BMS) to make its batteries easy to use, and
• Training qualified installers in how to deploy ZCell batteries at residential sites.

Simon Hackett has more than 25 years of senior management experience as the founder of national broadband company Internode, which he sold in 2012, and former non-executive director of iiNet Limited (2012-13) and NBN Co Limited (2013-16). Mr. Hackett, who is a major Redflow shareholder, is an active investor in innovative Australian technology businesses, including AvSoft and UltraServe.

Richard Aird is a professional operations manager with more than 20 years of experience in commercial development and operations. Mr. Aird was previously COO at Redflow from 2010-12.

Redflow's first shipment of batteries for deployment as ZCell residential flow batteries is currently "on sea" from Flex's factory in North America. Production enclosures for ZCell are currently being manufactured in Australia.

Simon Hackett said Redflow had received strong interest in ZCell, with more than 38,000 unique visitors to thewww.zcell.com website since it was launched at the end of March. To date, more than 1200 people from around Australia have directly expressed interest in buying ZCell-based energy systems," he said. “We have received enquiries from more than 380 installers interested in creating solutions based on the ZCell platform. We've already completed two training days with installers.

"Because this is a new technology to the residential market, we are being intentionally selective in our initial installer engagement and training processes. Our aim is to ensure that initial deployments of ZCell solutions are delivered in a cooperative and successful manner. This is pivotal time for Redflow. We need to carefully manage our production ramp-up and product delivery rates to balance with our sales growth across multiple market segments. For a still relatively small company, we are alive to the need to maintain this important balance."

For media assistance, call John Harris on 08 8431 4000 or email john@impress.com.au.

About Redflow www.redflow.com

Redflow Limited is an energy storage specialist that has developed the world’s smallest flow batteries. Redflow’s unique flow batteries are designed for stationary energy storage applications ranging from its ZCell home solution to its ZBM batteries for commercial, telecommunications and grid-scale deployment. Redflow is a publicly-listed company (ASX: RFX) that operates R&D facilities in Australia, as well as offices in the US and Europe. Produced in North America by Flex, one of the world’s largest supply chain solution companies, Redflow’s high energy density batteries are sold, installed and maintained by a global network of system integrators.

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