Billions investment planned in Thuringia: Chinese are duping German industry with battery project

06/12/2018

Billions invested in Thuringia planned Chinese are duping German industry with battery project

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The Chinese battery giant CATL apparently wants to build a large production facility in Germany and invest up to one billion euros for it. News Agency reports “Bloomberg” and the “Thuringian General” According to the announcement is imminent.

“We are negotiating with the Chinese battery manufacturer CATL about a settlement in Thuringia,” the newspaper quotes the Minister of Economic Affairs Wolfgang Tiefensee (SPD). But there are also other European locations in the race.

Asked by manager magazin for further details, the ministry left unanswered and referred to CATL. The Chinese company on Monday a furious stock market launch lay down, initially did not respond to a request. A person familiar with the process made it clear to manager-magazin.de that the election had actually fallen on Erfurt.

As soon as CATL announces this decision, it would be good news for Auto-Deutschland and some embarrassment at the same time. Because then the Asian could achieve something that the domestic industry has not achieved. Previous attempts to build larger-scale cell production have failed. Thus Daimler closed its cell production in the Saxon Kamenz after few years.

Since then there has been some dissatisfaction in the industry as to whether it makes economic sense to manufacture cells in Germany. Proceedings of the IG Metall and individual top managers from the car industry for a common work were always in the sand.

Suppliers Bosch announced in early March that they would not be able to produce any cells because of the huge financial outlay. The medium-sized start-up TerraE wants to start building a gigafactory in Germany in 2019, but has not yet named a location.

Leading industry experts had recently expected that the German car industry will have to permanently import battery cells. No new jobs are to be expected in this area, according to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO in cooperation with carmakers and IG Metall in early June.

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“The reason for this is that in 2016 a cell production of German manufacturers was not available and was not in prospect”, the authors justified their findings. However, even if they are taken into account, no particularly great employment effects are to be expected, since in cell production usually a very high degree of automation prevailed.

For Thuringia, however, the government hopes for several hundred jobs in the first expansion phase. The country will therefore do everything to bring the company to itself, announced Tiefensee.

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With a location in Central Europe, CATL would underline its enormous global growth ambitions and establish itself as a major supplier to major automotive groups such as Daimler. The Chinese have been talking to the Stuttgarter for some time about a supply contract for Europe. The big CATL customers already include Volkswagen, BMW and Hyundai.

The Chinese company (full name: Contemporary Amperex Technology Co) has recently been at the forefront of the global auto-traction business complained, Accordingly, CATL 2017 came to an annual production of twelve gigawatt hours – enough to overtake Tesla supplier Panasonic (ten gigawatts).

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