CATL to Invest $4.9B in New Battery Upstream Material Project

On October 12, Chinese battery firm Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) announced that its subsidiary company plans to invest in the construction of an integrated battery material industrial park project in Yichang, Hubei Province, with a maximum price tag of 32 billion yuan ($4.96 billion) and a building period of six years.

This project will enable the firm to recycle wasted battery materials and produce ferrous lithium phosphate, lithium cobaltate, ternary cathode materials and others.

CATL said that this industrial park project will be implemented by Guangdong Bangpu Recycling Technology Co., Ltd. and its subsidiaries. CATL is the largest shareholder of Guangdong Bangpu, holding about 52.8% of the latter’s shares.

According to the announcement, the battery upstream material project will further improve the strategic layout of CATL in the lithium battery new energy industry, giving full play to industrial synergy advantages, ensuring the supply of battery materials and promoting its goal of full life cycle management of used power batteries.

Since December 2020, CATL has announced six battery expansion projects with an investment of over 73.5 billion yuan. So far, the firm has laid out eight battery production bases both at home and abroad. According to the latest data disclosed in its semi-annual report, at the end of June 2021, the capacity of CATL batteries was 65.45 GWh while the capacity of its batteries under construction has reached 92.5 GWh.

CATL announced in August 2021 that it plans to raise no more than 58.2 billion yuan by issuing shares to specific objects, and the funds will be mainly used for the construction of lithium battery production bases.

SEE ALSO: CATL to Invest 13.5 Billion Yuan in Building a Lithium-Ion Battery Plant in Yichun, China

In the present atmosphere of large-scale expansion of battery capacity, CATL also focuses on the market of lithium batteries upstream materials. At the end of September 2021, CATL announced the acquisition of the entire equity of Millennium Lithium Corp, a Canadian lithium mine producer, at a price of 377 million Canadian dollars ($302 million). CATL also acquired part of the equity of Manono, an African lithium mine project, through purchasing shares in the company.