Exide Industries, one of India’s leading storage battery manufacturers, wants to build India’s first lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facility, known as the Advance Cell Chemistry Project or ACC.
India’s Leading Battery maker Exide to Set up first Lithium-ion Battery Plant in India
Exide Industries, one of India’s Leading storage battery manufacturers, wants to build India’s first lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facility, known as the Advance Cell Chemistry Project or ACC. It may look for a JV for the facility and make a final decision after the national government rolls out the fine print of the production linked Incentive (PLI) plan. Exide MD Subir Chakraborty revealed this following the company’s AGM.
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This would be in addition to the existing Exide Leclanche Energy lithium-ion battery facility that the business built in Gujarat in conjunction with Leclanche. However, the existing factory is more of an assembly unit than a manufacturer of lithium-ion cells. This Gujarat project has so far cost the business Rs.232 crore.
The Centre had already authorized Rs.18100 crore PLI program for the construction of Tesla-style Giga battery factories. According to the government, the objective is to establish up a 50-gigawatt-hour (GWh) manufacturing capacity for advanced chemical cell batteries by attracting investments of Rs.45000 crore.
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“We will make a decision on the lithium-ion cell unit by the end of this fiscal year,” the Exide MD added. He hasn’t ruled out the prospect of launching a joint venture with a foreign partner with technical expertise. He also stated that such projects demand a significant amount of funding. “As a rough estimate, such a facility would cost $100 million each gigawatt-hour. We can state that 1 GWh is not a viable project so that the investment can be understood,” he continued.
Exide’s MD went on to say that in the following years, the export component would steadily take up a larger share of sales. It now accounts for 8% of total turnover.
Exide now exports to 50 countries, including the UAE and the rest of Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States, according to Chakraborty. He also stated that Exide has been debt-free for the past ten years and will continue to be so.
