Western Europe’s Largest Battery Plant’s First Production Run by CATL

Recently, CATL officially launched its factory in Arnstadt, Thuringia, Germany.

It is reported that this factory is CATL's first battery factory in Europe and also its first factory outside of China. The initial investment is about 1.8 billion euros, and the initial planned production capacity is 14GWh. After full production, the annual output will reach about 30 million battery cells, which can be assembled with 185,000 to 350,000 electric vehicles. In April 2022, the factory officially obtained the 8GWh cell production license from the Thuringian state government. In December, the production of the first batch of lithium-ion battery cells began. These cells have passed all necessary tests.

Matthias Zentgraf, President of Ningde Times Europe, called it "the first large-scale battery production project in Western Europe." He introduced that a production line has been started in Arnstadt, and five more production lines will be put into operation in the future. Mass production will start in China, and the initial production capacity target of 14GWh will be reached in early 2024.

Bodo Ramelow, governor of Thuringia, said that CATL's German factory will not only play a central role in global industrial transformation but also play a key role in the transformation of the German and European auto industries. In the future, well-known European automakers will use batteries from CATL's German factories, which will surely strengthen the important position of Thuringia and even Germany as a car base. Its settlement has become the most important investment from Chinese companies in Thuringia in recent decades. "Here, we have a superfactory that has never been seen in the whole of Western Europe before." Bodo Ramelow said.

CATL, as the world's leading power battery company, will firmly occupy the dominant position in the installed capacity of power batteries in 2022. From a domestic point of view, according to the data released by the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, from January to December 2022, CATL won nearly half of the market share with an installed capacity of 142.02GWh, maintaining an absolute advantage in the power battery market. From a global perspective, data from SNE Research, a South Korean battery market research institution, shows that in the first 11 months of 2022, CATL's total installed battery capacity will reach 165.7GWh, a year-on-year increase of 101.8%, and its market share will rise from 32.2% in the same period in 2021 to 37.1%. , about three times the market share of the second place.

CATL is currently planning to build another European battery factory in Debrecen, Hungary. The plant has an investment of about 7.34 billion euros and a planned production capacity of 100 GWh. The factory is currently in the planning stage and is expected to start construction in the second half of 2023. The goal is to start production within two to three years. By then, the factory will become the largest power battery factory in Europe.