CHARTS: The coming critical minerals trade war is BRICS short of a load
"While a large number of countries around the world continue to talk about securing raw material supply, China is actually doing something about it."
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., the world’s biggest battery maker for electric cars with almost 35% of the market, plans to build a 14 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) manufacturing base in the city of Luoyang in the central Chinese province of Henan.
Construction of the project will take up to three years, CATL said in a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange Wednesday. CATL said in a separate filing that it will sell as much as 10 billion yuan of notes on China’s interbank market to fund the building and operation of its various projects.
CATL is expanding at pace as consumer demand for electric cars skyrockets. The company’s president said last week that CATL is considering a third factory in Europe after the Ningde, Fujian-based group last month announced plans to build a second European EV battery plant in Hungary.
That 7.3 billion euro ($7.2 billion) base, in partnership with Mercedes-Benz Group AG, has a planned output of 100 gigawatt hours and will also supply Volkswagen AG and Stellantis NV. CATL expects it to be ready within five years.
CATL didn’t disclose the envisaged output for its new Luoyang facility.
After a rocky start to 2022 that saw CATL post its sharpest-ever drop in quarterly earnings, the battery behemoth has rebounded, with first-half net income rising 82% from a year earlier and revenue jumping 156%.
CATL already has several production bases in China and subsidiaries in the US, Japan and Europe. It’s spending another 27 billion yuan on two battery projects in China’s Shandong and Fujian provinces and is looking at sites in Mexico and the US.
(By Danny Lee)
Comments