Nearly 10 battery companies built factories in Southeast Asia
At present, Chinese domestic power battery companies accelerate the formation of groups to go abroad, with core competitiveness of high-end products to overseas markets, accelerate the pace of "going out" to fill the international capacity gap.
According to incomplete statistics, up to now, China's power battery companies have built, under construction and planned to build overseas factories with a cumulative capacity of more than 300GWh, of which Southeast Asia, South Asia and other places have also become key markets of concern
Narit Therdsteerasukdi, secretary general of the Board of Investment of Thailand (BOI), said: "We are in talks with many companies, not only CATL, but also many companies in the battery industry. That's one of our goals. We want to attract battery manufacturers to set up factories in Thailand."
This means that CATL will further expand its production base to Southeast Asia, CATL official website shows that the company currently has 13 production bases in the world, of which 11 are in China, one is in Hungary, and one is in Germany. The company currently has no production facilities in Southeast Asia.
On May 13 last year, CATL announced the signing of a memorandum of strategic cooperation with Arun Plus Co., LTD., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thai National Oil Co., LTD. (PTT), in which the two sides will cooperate on battery-related businesses in the ASEAN region to further enhance their competitive advantage in the battery industry.
Under the agreement, CATL will license ArunPlus to use CTP (High Efficiency Grouping) technology, and the two parties will promote the landing application of CTP technology in Thailand and globally.
Southeast Asia "compete" for Chinese lithium battery companies to set up factories
With its advantages and endowments in future consumer market space, labor cost and manufacturing capacity, and new energy mineral resources, Southeast Asia is becoming a hot place for investment in Chinese electric vehicles, power batteries and their key raw material processing enterprises.
On the one hand, Southeast Asia is a region with 600 million people and continuous economic growth, but the penetration rate of cars is less than 20%, with the wave of vehicle electrification sweeping the world, the potential value of Southeast Asia's new energy market highlights.
At the same time, Southeast Asian countries are currently relatively mature in the production technology and labor force and other automotive industry chain links. At present, Thailand has become the largest automobile manufacturer in ASEAN and the tenth largest automobile producer in the world. Almost all of the world's leading car manufacturers have production lines in Thailand.
In addition to having a mature industrial chain and manufacturing capacity, the mineral resources required for electric vehicle batteries contained in the local area have also become an important capital for Southeast Asia to attract foreign investment.
Indonesia and the Philippines account for nearly half of the world's nickel reserves, making them ideal for electric vehicle and power battery manufacturers to build nearby.
Previously, CATL has announced that it will cooperate with two Indonesian state-owned enterprises to jointly invest no more than 5.968 billion US dollars to invest in the construction of power battery industry chain projects in Indonesia, including laterite nickel mine development, thermal smelting, wet smelting, battery recycling, ternary cathode materials and ternary battery manufacturing.
At present, many Southeast Asian countries are using tax breaks and other incentives to attract global electric vehicles, power batteries, and even upstream raw material companies to invest in local.
Thailand, for example, has attracted several electric vehicle companies to invest in the country over the past few years, such as China's Great Wall Motor and BYD.
At the same time, the Thai government aims to support and subsidize large-scale battery production facilities, and is prioritizing funding investments for plants with a capacity of more than 8GWh.
At the same time, because Southeast Asian countries have not cultivated local leading brands in new energy vehicles and power batteries, China's lithium battery industry chain enterprises have strong competitiveness in products, technology, supply chain, etc., therefore, Chinese enterprises have become the first choice for electric transformation in Southeast Asia.
Nearly 10 battery companies in Southeast Asia
In addition to CATL, at present, domestic lithium battery enterprises including Guoxuan High-tech, EVE Lithium Energy, Sunwoda, Rupu Lanjun, Tianneng , AZURE, GEM, Huayou Cobalt, Zhongwei(CNGR) and other battery and raw material enterprises have or are preparing to invest and cooperate in Southeast Asia.
In South Asia and Southeast Asia, through cooperation with local enterprises such as Tata, Vinfast and Novoplus, Guoxuan High-tech has steadily promoted the construction of overseas manufacturing bases
On November 18 last year, the battery factory cooperated by Gotion and Vietnam VinGroup officially started in Vietnam's Ha Tinh Economic Development Zone. The first phase of the project, with an annual capacity of 5GWh, is the first lithium iron phosphate battery factory in Vietnam and is expected to be put into operation by the end of 2023
On December 15, Gotion announced that the company's wholly-owned subsidiary Singapore Gotion and Nuovo signed a joint venture Agreement. The two sides intend to jointly establish a joint venture company in Thailand to build a power lithium-ion battery Pack base
It is expected that by the fourth quarter of 2023, the first phase of the production line will be commissioned and provide high-quality battery products to the market.
In October last year, the company announced that it would invest in cylindrical lithium battery manufacturing projects in Malaysia, with an investment amount of no more than $422 million, mainly producing cylindrical lithium-ion power tools, two-wheelers and cleaning tool battery series products.
On April 12, Xinwang Da issued an announcement that the company set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in Vietnam with its wholly-owned subsidiary, Hong Kong Xinwei Electronics Co., LTD., as the main body of investment, and has completed the registration procedures for industrial and commercial establishment, and obtained the "Business license" issued by the commercial registration Office of the Planning and Investment Department of Beijiang Province, Vietnam.
The new company, named "Xin Wangda Vietnam Co., LTD.," has a registered capital of $4 million and its business scope includes manufacturing, processing and assembling lithium batteries for mobile phones, laptops and other electrical and electronic devices. It is not clear if this includes the automotive business.
Rui Pu Lanjun(ChinaREPT) also said that the layout of the ultimate factory in Southeast Asia and other regions has been put on the agenda. Its planned establishment of cell production plants in Southeast Asia is conducive to helping the company take advantage of Tsingshan Group's various strategies in the upstream of the industrial chain in Indonesia.
In addition to automotive power BATTERY, the overall demand for electric light vehicles in Southeast Asia is optimistic, the consumer lithium market maintains an upward trend, and has also become a factory location for domestic consumer and small power lithium enterprises such as Xingheng Power Supply, blue lithium core, Tieneng Shares, Haopeng Technology and other targets.
In September last year, AZURE planned to invest in the construction of lithium battery projects in Malaysia, with a total investment of 280 million US dollars, and a new 10GWh cylindrical lithium battery manufacturing project.
The production capacity mainly serves customers in the application fields of energy storage (portable, household, industrial and commercial), power tools, intelligent travel, clean appliances, etc. After the completion of the project, it is expected that the annual production capacity of 21/46/50 lithium batteries will be 10GWh.
On March 28, Haopeng Technology announced that it intends to invest no more than 20 million US dollars (about 1.377 billion yuan) or equivalent foreign currency to invest in the establishment of subsidiaries in Vietnam to carry out research and development, production and sales of lithium batteries, nickel-metal hydride battery power batteries, and energy storage battery systems.
Tianneng's Vietnam plant construction project is in the application and approval stage, and will enter the construction stage after completing the preliminary preparation work.
It is worth mentioning that in the Southeast Asian new energy vehicles and upstream industry chain market, Japanese and South Korean companies occupy a considerable part of the market share, and LG New Energy, SDI and other companies are increasing investment in Southeast Asia. With the entry of domestic battery companies into the Southeast Asian market, it will squeeze out part of the market share of Japanese and Korean companies. The future competition in the Southeast Asian market will also be very fierce.
At the same time, overseas factories will also face many challenges, not only environmental protection and tax policies, labor and energy costs, localized supply chains, infrastructure construction, patent disputes, talent support and other issues that need to be considered.