CATL shares hit highest in five months on new investment projects

 

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China’s electric vehicle battery giant CATL opened over 6% higher at 479.37 yuan in Shenzhen, hitting the highest in nearly five months, before paring gains to 5.3%.

CATL plans to build a new project to recover waste batteries and make lithium materials, with investment of up to 23.8 billion yuan ($3.5 billion), the company said on Sunday.

Guangdong Bangpu Recycling Technology Co Ltd, a CATL unit, will invest and build the facilities in Foshan city in Guangdong province, CATL said. 

The project will have a capacity of recovering 500,000 tonnes of waste battery materials and make lithium iron materials and other materials, it said.

In addition, CATL is set to install six battery cell production lines by the end of 2023 at its new German battery plant and hopes to secure approval for 24 gigawatt-hours by June, said Matthias Zentgraf, president of CATL Europe.

CATL’s 1.8-billion-euro German factory, its first in Europe, sent its first sample battery cells to clients in December 2022.

At current capacity of 14 GWh, the company is targeting output of 30 million cells per year – enough to power around 350,000 electric cars with a 40 kilowatt-hour battery, Zentgraf said at an event at the plant to commemorate the start of production.

A second European plant in Europe, to be the continent’s largest at 100 GWh, is in planning phase but construction should start in the second half of the year, Zentgraf said, with the aim of beginning production within two to three years.