Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) plans to invest NT$6 billion (US$201.75 million) in building a battery cell center in Kaohsiung, the major iPhone maker said yesterday.
The investment reflects the company’s efforts to develop a comprehensive battery supply chain in the southern port city and marks its latest move to deepen its presence in the global electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.
The battery cell center — which would house research and development, as well as production — would be in the city’s Ho Fa Industrial Park (和發產業園區) and is expected to start mass production in the first quarter of 2024, Hon Hai said.
Photo: CNA
The center would have an installed capacity to make 1 gigawatt-hour per year of electric buses, sedans and energy storage devices, it said, adding that the products would be jointly developed by the company’s MIH Open Platform members.
The open platform for EV development, which was launched by Hon Hai three years ago, aims to shrink the time to get EVs to market, and has more than 2,300 members in Taiwan and abroad.
Hon Hai last month signed a contract manufacturing agreement and a joint-venture agreement with US-based pickup maker Lordstown Motors Corp.
In March, it delivered its first Model T electric bus to Kaohsiung Bus Co (高雄客運).
“The center in the Ho Fa Industrial Park is just the beginning of Hon Hai’s development of batteries in Taiwan,” Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said at a groundbreaking ceremony in Kaohsiung yesterday.
“We hope to build a battery supply chain entirely in Taiwan from battery materials and battery cells to battery packs. We hope to localize the whole supply chain,” he said.
The Kaohsiung facility is to play a crucial role in the company’s global EV business expansion, Liu said.
Hon Hai’s local partners in the battery cell business are China Steel Chemical Co (中鋼碳素化學), Long Time Technology Co (榮炭科技) and Gigasolar Materials Corp (碩禾電子材料). In October last year, the four companies signed a memorandum of understanding to develop anode material used in lithium-ion batteries for EVs.
Marketech International Corp (帆宣系統科技) chairwoman Margaret Kao (高新明) and BenQ Materials Corp (明基材料) president Ray Liu (劉家瑞) also attended yesterday’s groundbreaking ceremony.
Marketech is a supplier of active anti-vibration systems for semiconductor equipment, while BenQ Materials makes separators used in lithium-ion batteries.
Hon Hai said that further investment in the Ho Fa Industrial Park, the Ciaotou Science Park (橋頭科學園區) and the Kaohsiung Software Park (高雄軟體科技園區) would set up a testing ground for Internet-of-vehicle technologies.
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