Chinese Battery Leader CATL Invests 24 Billion Yuan in Expansion of Sichuan Factory
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL), China’s leading producer of EV batteries, announced on Thursday that it planned to invest in the construction of a new power battery production base in Yibin, Sichuan Province, with a maximum value of 24 billion yuan ($3.76 billion). The investor of this project is Sichuan Times New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of CATL.
Yibin is one of the top ten battery production bases operated by CATL. Among the top ten battery production bases currently laid out, nine are located in China, and another is located in Germany.
Since 2019, CATL has announced new power battery factories in Yibin with a total investment of about 32 billion yuan. These projects are constructed in six phases, and the investors are also Sichuan Times.
In June this year, the first phase of Yibin Base was officially put into production. At the commissioning ceremony of the project, Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, said that after the completion of Yibin Base, it would become the most important power battery production base in Southwest China of the company.
In July this year, CATL also signed a comprehensive deepening cooperation agreement with Yibin City, announcing that it would jointly build the southwest headquarters of the company in the local area.
Since 2017, CATL has been the world’s largest power battery manufacturer for four consecutive years. According to data released by SNE, a South Korean market research institution, in the first 11 months of this year, the global power battery shipments of CATL were 79.8 GWh, with a market share of 31.8%, continuing to rank first in the industry.
Since the beginning of this year, CATL has successively announced plans to build six new battery factories, with a total investment of about 52.5 billion yuan. In August this year, the company announced that it would issue shares to specific targets to raise 58.2 billion funds, which would be mainly used for new battery capacity and other purposes. In November, the company lowered the fundraising scale to 45 billion yuan.
In response to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) inquiry on fundraising, CATL said that by 2025, the battery capacity needed to reach 520 GWh, based on the global market share of power and energy storage batteries of 30%. In addition, CATL disclosed that its battery capacity was 106.41 GWh at present. If the battery production line that has been completed and put into operation completes the capacity climbing and runs stably, the designed annual capacity would reach 220-240 GWh.
In the first three quarters of this year, CATL achieved revenue of 73.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 132%. The net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 7.75 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 130%.
