CATL considers expanding to North America

CATL in North America

China's Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world's largest producer of lithium-ion batteries, is considering opening a facility in a North American country. This was reported on Saturday by Bloomberg news agency, citing its own sources.

According to its information, the company intends to build a plant capable of producing up to 80 gigawatt-hours of batteries annually.

Up to 10,000 employees are expected to work at the plant. According to Bloomberg, the plant will cost about $5 billion. The new CATL facility in North America, according to the agency, will supply batteries to both Tesla and other automakers.

CATL representatives, according to agency sources, traveled to Mexico earlier this month to discuss the matter. When talking about the possibility of CATL opening facilities in the U.S. and Canada in particular, company representatives, as noted by Bloomberg, expressed concerns about labour availability and other trade issues.

A CATL spokesman in China declined to comment on intentions to expand production in North America, planned investments and plant costs.

CATL, based in Ningde, currently operates ten plants. It also uses US-made chips in its battery management system, but is developing its own similar technology. CATL is also developing a new type of battery, the M3P, which will be cheaper than lithium-ion batteries.

It is worth noting that CATL announced last September that it intends to more than double its production capacity by selling its shares for 58.2 billion yuan (about 9.1 billion).

Three new production lines will be located in Ningde. The other two will be in Zhaoqing (southern Guangdong province) and Changzhou (eastern Jiangsu province). They will increase total annual lithium-ion battery production capacity by 137 gigawatt hours, up from 114.3 gigawatt hours in 2020 In December 2021, the company also announced a capacity expansion at its facility in Yibin (southwestern Sichuan province).