Sunwoda Subsidiary Establishes Power Battery Joint Venture

Power battery manufacturer Sunwoda announced on June 17 that its subsidiary Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., Ltd. (Sunwoda EVB), jointly invested with Dongfeng Motor Corporation and Dongfeng Hongtai Holdings Group Co., Ltd., is setting up a joint venture company. Specifically, Dongfeng Motor Corporation Group holds 87.24% equity of Dongfeng Hongtai Holdings Group.

According to the announcement, the registered capital of the joint venture is 500 million yuan ($74.75 million). The entity will carry out R&D for battery cells, modules and related components of power batteries and energy storage batteries to meet the requirements of the other two companies and their related parties. Sunwoda EVB, Dongfeng Motor Corporation and Dongfeng Hongtai Holdings Group plan to contribute 51%, 35% and 14% of investment, respectively.

In fact, before the establishment of this joint venture company, Sunwoda has already cooperated closely with Dongfeng Motor Corporation. According to the firm’s 2021 annual report, it has now established cooperative relationships with many well-known automobile manufacturers in China and abroad, and synchronous joint development mechanisms with customers on many mainstream models in the markets. The cooperative parties include Renault S.A., eGT New Energy Automobile Co., Ltd., Geely, and Dongfeng Motor Corporation.

Sunwoda, among China’s first batch of enterprises engaged in the production of lithium-ion battery modules, was founded in 1997. Its main businesses cover the R&D, design, production and sales of lithium battery battery cells and modules. In 2008, the company began to formally lay out its electric vehicles battery businesses, transforming from consumer batteries to power batteries.

In 2021, the company achieved an operating income of 37.359 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.82%, while its net profit was 916 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.18%. Specifically, the battery revenue of electric vehicles was 293 million yuan, accounting for 7.85% overall. Although its battery revenue accounts for a small proportion, the growth rate of this business is the fastest, with a year-on-year increase of 584.67% in 2021. It has gradually come to represent a new growth pole for the company.

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Since 2021, Sunwoda has continuously accelerated its layout process for the power battery industry chain. At the end of July 2021, the firm joined hands with Geely and Zhejiang Jirun Automobile Co., Ltd. to establish a joint venture company with a total investment of 5 billion yuan. After the project is put into production, it is estimated that the annual production capacity will be 800,000 sets of hybrid power batteries. In August, the firm announced that it would invest 20 billion yuan in building a power battery production base in Nanchang.