Taiwan chooses France to host first overseas car battery plant
Taiwanese battery maker Prologium says it will invest more than €5 billion in building a new gigafactory in the northern French port city of Dunkirk for its first European plant.
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The group hopes to start production at the end of 2026, and ramp up over several years until it has some 3,000 employees in the factory.
It will invest €5.2 billion in Dunkirk by 2030, and produce batteries for hundreds of thousands of cars once at full capacity.
The group specialises in the development of "solid-state" batteries, which are considered more powerful, safer and quicker to charge than the lithium-ion cells often used in electric vehicles.
Prologium will be the fourth battery plant in a northern France, adding to an emerging specialised cluster that is central to developing Europe's electric car industry.
Europe largely depends on batteries made in Asia for electric cars, with countries offering various incentives to kickstart the industry.
This has become more urgent since the US passed its $430-billion Inflation Reduction Act last year, which provides big tax subsidies to cut carbon emissions while boosting domestic production and manufacturing.
Well-connected
With Taiwan a focal point in tensions between Washington and Beijing, the company wants to set up a base overseas to ensure it can maintain operations over the long-term.
"Because of political issues, our board does not want to enlarge too much capacity there (in Taiwan)," founder and chief executive Vincent Yang said.
The Taiwanese group decided on Dunkirk because it allows proximity to its customers too, Normand said, with many electric vehicle factories located in northern Europe.
“Dunkirk is extremely well connected: rail, road, highway; it’s a deep sea harbour so easy for us to import and export some of our products," Normand said.
"It's fair to say that there is a developing ecosystem for batteries in northern France.”
The plant will contribute 12,000 indirect jobs in the region, Prologium said.
Seduction operation
France beat out competition from Germany and the Netherlands for the ProLogium plant with lobbying from President Macron and deal sweeteners, executives from the Taiwanese company said.
Also playing in France's favour was its competitively priced zero-carbon electricity, produced by one of the biggest fleets of nuclear plants in the world but also increasingly by offshore wind farms and solar.
Normand said that Macron pitched Yang more than a year ago and met with him personally at the start of the vetting process.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire followed up and helped make the company's case with the European Commission for EU financial incentives.
Macron officially announced the €5.2-billion investment on Friday during a visit to Dunkirk – a town with high unemployment where the far right and far left are well implanted.
The timing of the investment is fortuitous for the French president as he tries to turn the page on months of strikes and protests over his pension reform to raise the retirement age from 62 years to 64.
Macron is keen to show sceptical voters his pro-business push is bearing fruit.
(with wires)
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