Fred Zhang, CATL’s manager responsible for international communications, said that the battery factory being built in Debrecen will be a server for European car factories, and will supply to about 30 brands from there. As he said, construction of the factory will begin this summer, a test operation will follow next year, and production will begin in 2025, which will be carried out first by Chinese workers and later by robots, writes 24.hu.
Fred Zhang, CATL’s international communications manager, told Növekedes.hu that the Debrecen factory produces batteries for the orders of car manufacturers, not for stock.
As he said, they produce batteries for 30 automotive brands, that is, for all companies engaged in the production of electric cars. Within this, the facility in Debrecen is expected to serve the car factories operating in Europe.
CATL’s plant in Debrecen enables us to meet the challenges of the growing demands of the European market, improve our global production network and help accelerate e-mobility and the European energy transition
– Fred Zhang said.
According to Zhang, lithium-ion batteries will be produced in Debrecen, specifically cell and module production. As it turned out, the construction of the factory will start this summer, and next year it will be able to operate in a test operation, and by 2025 they will switch to production at full capacity.
The robots are coming
It also turned out that the factory in Debrecen will be fully automated: most of the work processes will be carried out by robots, so only personnel supervising the operation of the machines will be needed. According to Zhang, at first only Chinese specialists will arrive in Hungary, but he added that later on, they would like to provide the majority of the planned 9,000 staff – which Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó previously spoke about – from locals.
The company’s representative also talked about the fact that they are negotiating with more than ten companies to buy electricity from green power plants with long-term contracts. The electricity consumption of the three factory units is estimated at 80 MW per unit, and the peak during the operation of the three phases will be 300 MW.
