CALB prepares to build its battery plant in Portugal

Chinese battery manufacturer CALB will start with the construction of its first European battery factory this year. The plant at the port of Sines, Portugal, first announced in 2022, is scheduled to go into operation in 2028, not at the end of 2025 as initially planned. The company will build cells and ready-to-install packs there.

According to Reuters, CALB wants to produce lithium batteries in Portugal with a total annual capacity of 15 gigawatt hours, corresponding to around 187,000 batteries for electric vehicles per year. The batteries will be manufactured “mainly [for EVs] in the European market.” The production facility will be built on a 92-hectare site in the Sines industrial and logistics zone. Reuters reports that CALB is planning five plant sections for the production of electrodes, cells, the assembly of batteries and packs and the construction of the battery housing. The media reports do not specifically mention the cell chemistry. They only refer to “lithium batteries.”

CALB is reportedly investing 2 billion euros in the project, which is classified as an IPCEI project (‘Important Projects of Common European Interest’) in the EU and is subsidised accordingly. The factory is expected to create 1,800 direct jobs and, according to CALB, could “represent more than 4% of the national GDP [Gross Domestic Product] when it reaches total production capacity” in 2028.

CALB expects the expansion to “strengthen its presence in the European electric vehicle (EV) market and energy storage systems (BESS).” A senior manager is quoted as saying that the factory “will not only create new jobs, but will also put Portugal at the forefront of the production of batteries for electric vehicles in Europe.”

The Chinese company announced the move in 2022, when Euractiv reported, citing the CALB manager responsible for Portugal, that it was planning to build its first batteries in Sines as early as 2026 and was aiming to triple production to 45 GWh by 2028. It now appears that the project will not be realised quite so quickly and extensively after all.

According to a new analysis by market research company SNE Research, the Group accounted for 4.4 per cent of the global market for electric vehicle batteries in 2024. With 39.4 GWh, CALB was the fourth largest EV battery supplier in the world according to the statistics – behind CATL (339.3 GWh), BYD (153.7 GWh) and LG Energy Solution (96.3 GWh).

lusa.pt via odigital.sapo.pt (in Portuguese), reuters.com