Wuxi Lead and InoBat Auto have announced that they have signed a purchase contract for a lithium-ion battery production line in Voderady, Slovakia. Lead will be the sole equipment supplier for the pilot phase of the project and will design, manufacture, and assemble a customized turnkey solution of lithium-ion batteries for InoBat. The whole plotline, capable of producing 260,000 battery cells annually, aims to produce its first batteries by the end of 2022.
Yanqing Wang, Chairman of Wuxi Lead said: "InoBat is one of our most important partners in Europe. Wuxi Lead will be the only equipment supplier to provide InoBat with the whole line equipment and services. At the same time, the whole production line will be equipped with the digital solution jointly developed by Lead and Siemens. This cooperation between Lead and InoBat represents a strong recognition of Lead's products, technologies, and services. I believe Lead will build an intelligent battery manufacturing factory that will attract worldwide attention.
Marian Bocek, Chief Executive Officer of InoBat Auto said: Wuxi Lead is the world's leading manufacturer of new energy equipment, and this purchase contract represents another important milestone in the development of our advanced facility in Voderady. Given InoBat's purpose is to supply customers with premium electric batteries that are custom-designed to meet their specific requirements, Wuxi Lead's flexibility in chemistry, cell size and format provides us with important technological capabilities, supported by their localized service capabilities, including its professional pre-sales, after-sales, and service team in Europe. This latest step demonstrates our consistent and continued progress towards one of our key strategic growth objectives of ensuring that Europe has a reliable and scalable EV-battery manufacturing base."
The pouch line solution provided by Lead for InoBat Auto adopts the leading high-speed stacking technology allowing for efficient and precise production. At the same time, the line is capable of fast changeovers of toolkits, enabling flexibility in cell formats and sizes.
The contract covers the pilot phase of the project in Voderady, Slovakia, which focuses on rapidly developing the next generation of customized batteries. This R&D centre and a pilot line will identify the optimum cell chemistries to meet the exact requirements of any vehicle maker or manufacturer according to their needs. In the next phases of the project, InoBat will focus on a manufacturing scale-up through several gigafactories planned globally.