Blue Line Battery, a manufacturer of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, announced that it has secured $500,000 in funding from a group of Wisconsin-based angel investors.
The angel investors included Silicon Pastures and Lancaster Investment. Irontek, a tech hub and co-working space in Beloit, served as the lead investor.
Headquartered in Whitewater, the company’s line of products include portable batteries for forklifts, pallet jack batteries, electric vehicles and other handling equipment. Unlike lead-acid batteries, Blue Line’s batteries are maintenance-free, eliminating the need for watering, equalizing, or swapping batteries between work shifts, the company explains.
“A this critical time in history, when you have forklift operators working around the clock to get critical shipments of surgical masks and other lifesaving products into the hands of people who need them, anything you can do to reduce their workload and make their lives easier is going to be greatly appreciated,” said Teresa Esser, manager of the Silicon Pastures Angel Investment Network, in the release.
Blue Line Battery CEO Dustin Herte launched the company in 2017. As a mechanical engineer, Herte began his career building high-performance electric bikes. Not long after, he began selling the batteries and uncovered an opportunity to provide similar products for companies with forklift operations.
The startup landed initial funding from Whitewater’s Community Development Authority, and received additional support from the Whitewater University Innovation Center and startup accelerator gBETA in Beloit.
Herte explains that lead-acid batteries can weigh between 1,500 and 4,500 pounds, and that replacing the batteries can often be a difficult and dangerous task for operators of heavy industrial equipment.
“I was privy to how messy and inefficient these batteries could be; we’ve seen customers spilling acid,” Herte says. “The conversation wasn’t how we can sell you a battery. It was ‘How can we solve your problem?’ Aside from the fast-moving environment [of warehousing], we have customers who are moving critical materials.”
Part of the company’s success stems from its ability to bring a new technological solution to an old industry, says David Becker, director of operations at Lancaster Investments.
Still, Herte says the bootstrapped venture experienced a few trials as it worked to get off the ground and into the warehouse.
“The e-bike design didn’t directly translate to forklifts so we had to do a lot of development,” Herte says. “[There] was extreme economic hardship for the first year. But we got really good at picking up the phone and doing everything we could to get in front of groups to talk.”
Today, Blue Line Battery offers a full line of lithium-ion battery products and sells them through a national distributor network.
Herte says he plans to use this latest round of funding to continue developing Blue Line’s energy-storage technology and making a mark in stationary energy storage for the solar industry, a market that is twice the size of forklift operations, Herte says.
“Your first idea will not be what you take to market, and the first idea you take to market will not be the one your business builds its foundation on,” Herte says. “We have always found ourselves on the cutting edge of technological development but with means to make that technology accessible to most companies. Hopefully, we’re heading down that road.”
