On January 26, 2023 local time, CATL, the global power battery leader, officially launched its factory in Arnstadt, Thuringia, Germany.

This is CATL's first battery factory in Europe. The investment in the factory is about 1.8 billion euros, and the initial planned production capacity is 14GWh. It is estimated that the annual output after full production will reach 30 million battery cells, enough to assemble 185,000 to 350,000 electric vehicles.

At the launch ceremony that day, Matthias Zentgraf, president of Ningde Times Europe, said: "This will be the first mass production of batteries in Western Europe."

Zentgraf said that in 2023, CATL's German factory will have five production lines put into operation, and the factory will begin mass production of battery cells in mid-2023, and is expected to reach an initial production capacity target of 14GWh early next year.

It is expected that CATL's German factory will be approved by the local government in June 2023 to increase the factory's production capacity to 24GWh.

CATL's German factory will supply battery cells to European automakers such as BMW, Daimler, and Bosch. According to the report of the German "Manager Magazine", so far, most of the batteries for electric vehicles in Germany are shipped from China. After the new German factory of the Ningde era is put into operation, the batteries can be directly shipped from central Germany to German car companies.

In October 2019, the German factory of the Ningde era began to break ground. In April 2022, the factory received an 8GWh battery production license from the Thuringian state government. On December 21, 2022, Ningde Times announced that the German factory has started producing the first batch of lithium-ion battery cells as planned. These cells have passed all necessary tests.

In addition, the reporter learned from Ningde Times that the raw materials used in the battery production of Ningde Times' German factories come from Europe and China, and are still mainly imported from China.

This is partly due to CATL's longstanding relationships with Chinese suppliers. However, Matthias Zentgraf, president of Ningde Times Europe, said in an interview that some Chinese suppliers have opened battery raw material factories near Ningde Times' German factory.

In the long run, CATL's German factory hopes to further localize its supply chain, and will organize a supplier meeting near Weimar, Germany, later in 2023 to start building relationships, Zentgraf said.

"We're just getting started," Zentgraf said. "When production grows to a certain point, we'll reassess our supply relationships."

In addition to the German factory, Ningde Times is currently preparing to build another battery factory in Debrecen, Hungary, with an investment of about 7.34 billion euros and a planned production capacity of 100GWh. The factory is expected to start construction in the second half of 2023, with the goal of starting within two to three years. Production.

The battery factory in Debrecen, Hungary is also close to the production plants of many automakers, such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Stellantis and Volkswagen, which enables CATL's batteries to better meet the needs of European consumers.

CATL will become the largest battery maker in Europe once CATL's Hungarian factory is at full capacity.

There are still uncertainties in the overseas layout

According to statistics from the global information agency sne research, in the global power battery market, Ningde still occupies an absolute leading position. In the first 11 months of 2022, the total installed battery capacity of Ningde era worldwide is 165.7GWh, which is more than double that of 82.1GWh in the same period of 2021, with a year-on-year growth rate of 101.8%. The global market share is 37.1%, an increase of 4.9 percentage points year-on-year, which is about three times that of the second-ranked BYD, which has a market share of 13.6%.

However, what needs to be vigilant is that the overseas production capacity layout of CATL is still full of uncertainties.

About 44% of Europe's planned battery capacity by 2030 will come from Asian companies, with CATL topping the list, data showed, raising concerns among European politicians about overreliance on foreign producers for key technologies.

In December 2022, Ford Motor Company of the United States revealed that Ford is negotiating with Ningde Times to plan to build a joint venture battery factory in the United States, and Virginia is one of the candidate locations. According to the latest report from Bloomberg, the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin (Glenn Youngkin), is preventing the cooperation from happening in the state.

The proposed $3.5 billion plant, which will make electric vehicle batteries for Ford Motor Co., will create about 2,500 jobs in one of the poorest parts of Virginia.

However, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has directed the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEPA) division to exclude the state from its shortlist of potential sites for the plant.

Yang made public comments on the move when he delivered his annual state of the state address on Jan. 11. "I've said before that I want 'Made in America' to mean 'Made in Virginia,'" he said.

Ningde Times and Ford have previously stated that the two companies are considering a cooperative relationship in terms of the specific method of cooperation between the two parties to build factories. Ford owns the battery factory, and Ningde Times operates the production of batteries. The above-mentioned cooperation model will enable battery factories to take full advantage of the tax incentives of the US federal government's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) without requiring direct financial investment from CATL. Editor/Xu Shengpeng