Thursday 7 November 2019

EV battery gigafactory in Poland granted €250m

A London-based bank is providing a long term loan of €250 million (£216m) to support the construction of a battery gigafactory for electric vehicles (EVs) in Poland.

The €2.8 billion (£2.4bn) LG Chem facility in Wrocław is expected to have a total production capacity of around 65GWh to 70GWh a year by 2022.

This will allow the company to supply batteries for up to one million electric vehicles (EVs) per year – around 6% of the cars sold in Europe – helping reduce emissions by more than one million tonnes annually.

LG Chem expects the project to create an additional 1,000 jobs by 2022.

Frederic Lucenet, Global Head of Industries at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said: “We are proud to support this landmark investment, which will lead the green transformation of Europe’s automotive sector. In all its industrial projects across all 38 economies in which the EBRD invests, the Bank is investing in priority and in majority for the decarbonisation of the hard-to-abate sectors.

“Becoming part of LG Chem’s ambitious venture in Poland illustrates that the EBRD is up for it.”