Europe Funds EV Battery Plant in Poland

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The European Union (EU) has advanced its ambitions to become a global player in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles (EV) by approving a 480 millio-euro ($522 million) loan to LG Chem Group for the construction of a new plant in Poland.

The loan has been made by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to the company's Polish subsidiary LG Chem Wroclaw Energy to build new facilities at its site in Wroclaw in the southwest of the country. The subsidiary was created to develop the company's advanced lithium ion battery operations in Europe. The EIB loan will cover around a third of the total project costs, estimated at 1.5 billion euro ($1.63 billion), with the remainder coming from LG Chem and other financing sources.

"This first EIB operation with LG Chem Wroclaw Energy is significant for many reasons," explained Teresa Czerwinska, vice president of the European Investment Bank, who oversees operations in Poland. "It helps Europe to build a critical mass in electric vehicle battery production at a pivotal time of electric vehicle commercialisation in Europe; it promotes a shift to electro-mobility and to a greener automotive industry; and it helps create new qualified jobs in an industrial region in transition to a new economic model. Today's operation proves that with the right partners and the right projects in place we can combine cohesion objectives with innovation and strong climate action."

Jeong Joon Ha, chief financial officer of LG Chem Wroclaw Energy, added: "The loan provides our company with the resources to create a competitive battery value chain in Europe and Poland. Furthermore, it enables the LG Chem Group to take the lead in terms of growth of the European battery market and community development."

The project will expand existing operations at the site, including the construction of a "fully smart factory" designed to mass-produce the latest generation of high energy density li-ion electrodes, cells, modules and battery packs. The new plant will have an annual production capacity of over 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh), which can potentially power more than 500,000 EVs. This will boost the plant's total output to more than 65 GWh per year, making it one of the largest lithium-ion cell factories in the world, according to the EIB. In addition, the project will create 1,800 new jobs at the Wroclaw, taking the total workforce up to more than 6,000 full-time employees by end-2022.

Industrial Info is tracking all of the major EV battery plant projects in Europe, including Tesla's announcement in November that it had chosen Berlin, Germany, for its first European EV manufacturing "Gigafactory." The largest confirmed project underway is the Northvolt AB project in Skelleftea, Sweden, to produce 8 GWh of battery capacity starting in 2020. For additional information, see November 25, 2019, article - Tesla Picks Berlin for First European Gigafactory and June 24, 2019, article - Europe's First Giant Battery Plant Gets Funding.

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