Geely grew steadily and the purpose of a new battery plant is to meet demand for power batteries and stimulate the local economy.
Geely Technology Group (Chinses: 吉利科技), has signed a cooperation agreement with Tonglu County in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province to build a power battery factory with a capacity of 12 Gigawatt hours (GWh) per year.
The factory will cover an area of 450 mu, or 30 hectares. Meanwhile, to improve the county’s employment, the local government is planning to create an auto industrial cluster aimed at synergetic development. It will include OEMs, auto parts and services suppliers, according to media reports. Moreover, local government will set up a team to make sure the project runs efficiently.
Since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak in Shanghai, the auto industry has been severely affected. More and more companies have made efforts to decentralize their supply chains to offset the impact of a zero-Covid policy.
Based on Geely’s sales data, the company sold 27,536 units of new energy vehicles in Q1 2022, an increase of around 226.9% over the same period the previous year.
China’s power battery market is intensively competitive. Geely Technology faces competition in the market from CATL, BYD and CALB (Chinese: 中航锂电). Their battery’s production capacity in 2021 was 96.7 GWh, 26.3 GWh and 7.9 GWh, respectively.