1,500 billion forints in sales, 1 terawatt hour of annual electricity consumption, a 100-hectare solar park and a 300-apartment residential complex – among other things, these were the figures given on Wednesday at the company’s background meeting in Budapest. The event could be called a press event, because the sector is not known for good communication, with Samsung in Göd and SK battery factories in Komárom, for example, not even talking to us.

However, Bamo Technology, the Hungarian subsidiary of the Chinese Huayou Group, has learned from the mistakes of earlier arrivals and has now sat down with journalists to dispel any doubts. And at the event, to our surprise, they did indeed reveal the most important details of the investment.

On 21 June, Péter Szijjártó announced that a new HUF 520 billion factory to make cathodes for batteries will be built on the outskirts of Ács, near Komárom. The announcement caused outrage in the village because a week ago the mayor denied that a battery factory was coming to the village, which was half-true at best. Since then, a petition against the factory has been collected in the area. But this has not deterred the company, which is in the midst of planning the factory.

One of the largest factories in Hungary

The background briefing was told that the manufacturing process involves mixing a mixture of nickel, manganese and cobalt with lithium, which is then combined in an electric furnace. The nickel, manganese and cobalt are mined in Africa and Indonesia, purified, processed and mixed in China, and the mixture is then shipped and trucked to Hungary.

The company has an annual production capacity of 100,000 tonnes, which means a daily turnover of 25 truckloads of raw materials and finished products.

The annual turnover of the plant in Acs is expected to reach €4 billion, or HUF 1,500 billion, after the start-up in 2026. This is a pretty hefty sum, with only Audi in Győr, Samsung in Göd and Mercedes in Kecskemét among Hungarian factories with a higher turnover. By the second half of the 2020s, they are expected to be joined by the battery factories in Ivánze, Debrecen and Nyíregyháza.

Eats as much electricity as a county

The plant would require 120 megawatts of electricity, equivalent to one terawatt hour per year. This is the equivalent of the electricity consumption of the entire population of a county and a quarter of the output of a Paks unit.

Huayou representatives now promise to source much of the brutal electricity demand from renewable energy. Solar panels would be installed on the roof of the factory, and a 100-hectare solar farm is expected to be built in the area (the latter could have a capacity of 40-50 megawatts, according to the rule of thumb, so it could generate a fraction of the factory’s electricity needs even during sunny hours.) They pointed out that the area has good wind conditions, so they are expected to try to buy wind-generated electricity.

Building their own housing estate

The factory is expected to employ 900 people. Initially, Chinese workers will be brought in for jobs requiring expertise and knowledge of the machinery, but it is planned to replace them with Hungarians after a 2-3 year transition period. To recruit the best possible Hungarian engineers, cooperation has been initiated with the universities of Győr and Óbuda.

Housing for industrial workers is an acute problem in Hungary, particularly in the Győr-Tatabánya-Komárom triangle, which includes Ács. Huayou would therefore build a 300-apartment housing estate for its workers near the factory, with its own shops and infrastructure. It was pointed out at the meeting that this would not resemble traditional workers’ housing, with smaller apartments of around 45 square metres.

In such investments, an important question is always how many Hungarian subcontractors the factory will work with. The Huayou representatives have now said that they will try to use Hungarians for the construction, but not for the production: both the raw materials and the technology will come from China, and they don’t really need anyone else.

They will supply battery factories

In Hungary, investments related to the battery industry have been announced almost every month in recent years. The biggest of these are the companies producing finished batteries (e.g. Samsung, SK, CATL, Sunwoda), and Huayou, which produces the cathode, supplies them, one step below them in the value chain.

This does not mean that they are insignificant in the sector. At today’s technology level, batteries account for about 60 percent of the value of electric cars, and Huayou estimates that cathodes account for 40 percent of the value of batteries. Their end product will therefore be roughly a quarter of the value of electric cars sold.

One of the reasons Huayou has come to Hungary is that so many battery factories have already come here that they have a lot of potential customers in the area. For the time being, they have an agreement with the battery factory Eve Power, which is coming to Debrecen and will install their batteries in the BMW factory in Debrecen. Globally, Huayou is also working with CATL, Samsung, SK and Sunwoda, so it is possible that they will also supply them in Hungary.

They come here for a reason, they were invited

Battery production is an important part of the Hungarian government’s economic policy, they believe it is the future of the industry and can put the country at the forefront of European industry. To this end, they are providing thousands of billions of forints in support for battery companies setting up here and for building the infrastructure they need.

In Hungary, many people fear that all manufacturing processes linked to batteries are toxic. This is because toxic chemicals have been found in groundwater near Samsung in Göd, and there have been irregularities at other factories, including the closure of the battery processing plant in Bátonyterenye. However, this does not mean that all factories are poisonous, it depends on whether they comply with the rules that apply to them, which the state itself unfortunately does not always try to enforce.

After the announcement of the cathode plant in Acs, we went to the village to see what the locals thought of the project. The majority were not very enthusiastic at the time, and you can read our report here.

Source : www.telex.hu