GM, battery materials supplier to team up on $1 billion North American facility

General Motors Co. and POSCO Future M are planning to increase production of cathode active material or CAM, a key battery material that represents about 40% of battery cell cost, at a new facility in North America, the companies said Friday.

The new facility expands the GM and South Korea-based POSCO Future M Ultium CAM joint venture with an investment that’s now expected to exceed $1 billion. In addition to increasing CAM production, the companies plan to have a new processing facility for precursor CAM or pCAM production. Both CAM and pCAM processing is currently concentrated in Asia.

The location of the facility will be announced later, the companies said. The investment is expected to create hundreds of jobs when the facility opens in 2024. POSCO Future M, previously known as POSCO Chemical, and GM are already building a facility in Quebec for CAM production.

Friday’s annoucement comes after Canada and Quebec said they will provide about $150 million in Canadian dollars ($112 million in U.S. dollars) for the GM-POSCO battery materials facility, Reuters reported on Monday.

The Detroit automaker is building up its supply chain for EVs to reach its goal of having capacity to build 1 million electric vehicles in North America by the end of 2025. GM anticipates the majority of components will be sourced, processed or manufactured in North America.

GM and POSCO established the Ultium CAM joint venture, which is mostly owned by POSCO, in July 2022. The joint venture will support production of about 360,000 of GM’s Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, Buick and BrightDrop vehicles annually between 2025-2030 in North America.

Doug Parks, GM executive vice president, global product development, purchasing and supply chain said in a statement that GM’s decision to increase CAM production capacity and adding pCAM to our joint venture “is another significant step in building a more secure and sustainable North America-focused supply chain to support GM’s fast-growing EV production needs.”