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Chinese EV Battery manufacturer, CATL is setting up a plant in Erfurt, Germany with a
€240 million investment by 2022
Two weeks after CATL received notice of the premature start of construction of its battery cell plant near Erfurt, capital of the German state of Thuringia, the official ground-breaking ceremony took place on Friday.
CATL’s first production facility outside China should have production lines running at the “Erfurt Kreuz” industrial site by the beginning of 2022.
The Chinese battery making giant will invest 1.8 billion euros in the site in the medium term and create up to 2,000 jobs. In June this year, CATL decided to increase the investment in its planned factory in Erfurt by a factor of 7.5: Instead of the originally planned 240 million euros. “In many respects, the project is an investment of superlatives,” comments Thuringia’s Economics Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, who has been promoting the location since the beginning of 2017.
The German Federal State of Thuringia has been tenacious in its fight for the contract, which lasted about one and a half years, and has now paid off. The deciding factor in favour of the Erfurt site over other options was the existing infrastructure and the accessibility of all German car manufacturers within four hours. “For Thuringia, the establishment of CATL is one of the most important industrial investments of recent decades,” he said at the ground-breaking ceremony. Matthias Zentgraf, Co-president Europe CATL said: “We believe that the combination of Germany’s industrial tradition and CATL’s tradition of innovative battery technology will greatly accelerate the electrification of the automotive industry in Europe.”
