Gotion’s 950 million Euro battery projects in Spain continue

Chinese battery manufacturer Gotion High-Tech and the Spanish Ministry of Industry have officially approved a €950 million (US$1.09 billion) project to build a battery cathode plant and a recycling plant in Valladolid. Gotion, whose largest shareholder is the Volkswagen Group, aims to start construction in 2027. However, construction will be divided into two phases. Phase One, with a budget of €411.5 million, will target the recycling facility with the capacity to process up to 200,000 tonnes of battery material per year. Phase Two, with a budget of 539.1 million Euros, will produce 200,000 tons of cathode material per year. Gotion did not give an exact timeline for either the completion of the first phase or the start of the second phase. The investment was supported by €138 million in grants from the Spanish government under the PERTE financing programme; this was €46 million more than previously reported in May. PERTE had previously supported Volkswagen’s Seat brand, Stellantis Group, and Volkswagen’s own battery division, PowerCo, with hundreds of millions of euros. Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente told local newspaper El País that Gotion “aims to commission the factories very soon,” describing the cathode plant as “unique in the European Union” and the recycling plant as having differentiating technology. Puente added that the Ministry expects Gotion’s total Spanish investment, together with its partner InoBat, to eventually reach €5 billion covering the entire battery supply chain, reducing exposure to tariffs and international market fluctuations. Gotion, whose Valladolid facilities were initially linked to Slovak battery manufacturer InoBat, which undertook the project before offering the guarantees required by the Spanish government, stepped in as a shareholder of InoBat. The company plans to build its Spanish facilities near Morocco, pairing low-cost North African production with EU-based finishing and market access. With Stellantis in Aragon and the Envision AESC plant in Extremadura, along with vehicle assembly moves by Chery, SAIC’s MG brand, Leapmotor and Geely, Spain is increasingly positioning itself as a preferred entry point for Chinese capital within the EU’s tariff wall, hosting both D’s regional hub and the first major car factory within the bloc, as it is the supply chain gap that Europe most needs to close. Cell manufacturing capacity is growing faster than access to upstream materials, which is heavily dependent on processing in China. The fact that the plant expected to fix this is partly owned by Volkswagen underscores how complex Europe’s push for battery independence has become.

Information: This content was prepared and published using AutomobileMagazine’s artificial intelligence-supported publishing system, in line with the information shared by international automotive manufacturers and reliable press sources.