644 meters of gleaming stainless steel tanks, gigantic pipes winding from floor to ceiling, tireless robots programmed to convey, store, assemble… And at the end of the immense production line, the hope of Europe: that of earn its sovereignty in the batteries. After the facilities of Sweden’s Northvolt, the Automotive Cells Company (ACC) plant is the second project led by companies from the Old Continent to invest in the area.
In France, it is the first to reach the mass production stage. “For the first time since Airbus, France and Europe are creating a new industrial sector”, famous with his usual emphasis the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, he who released a nice envelope of 1.28 billion euros. euros in aid with Germany to support the initiative.
Rising from the ground in record time – barely three years since the creation of ACC – the cement and steel cathedral will be operational from July 2023. On the border of the municipalities of Douvrin and Billy-Berclau, in the Pas -de-Calais, it will have a capacity of 13.4 gigawatt hours (GWh) from 2024. By 2030, the gigafactory will rise to 40 GWh and will employ 2,000 people. Two sites will follow suit, in Germany and Italy. Enough to meet the needs of Mercedes, TotalEnergies and Stellantis shareholders. The powerful general manager of the latter, Carlos Tavares, does not rule out supplying other groups. Unity is strength. Above all to do the colossal work that awaits Europe in the batteries.
China crushes the competition
We will first have to win the battle for the rise in power of these new assembly plants. A revolution for automobile groups: the activity is not based on mechanics, but on chemistry. The bulk of the challenge remains. Despite the projects of ACC, the spin-off of the Swedish Northvolt across the continent or the bet of the French start-up Verkor in Dunkirk, the region still has a lot to do to reduce its dependence on Asia. The days when China struggled to produce heat engines are well and truly over. The largest car-exporting nation in the world – right under Germany’s nose! – now firmly holds the reins of the electric car production chain.
As the world’s leading producer of graphite, the country has established itself in a crucial stage, upstream of the assembly of batteries: the refining of raw materials. More than half of the transformation of lithium, cobalt and graphite is carried out on site, estimates the International Energy Agency. Fueled by constantly rising demand, Chinese manufacturers of production machinery also share the world market with their South Korean or Japanese counterparts. In Pas-de-Calais, ACC had to resign itself to this state of affairs. Some of the nickel used in its future batteries, as well as all of the manganese and graphite, are imported from China. In the deceptive calm of the awakening gigafactory, seconded Chinese employees put the finishing touches to the installation of machines born on the other side of the world. “Fortunately Google translation exists, because they don’t always speak English,” laughs an ACC employee, who sometimes rubs shoulders with them in front of the coffee machine. This is the price to pay to ensure the rapid deployment of a battery factory in Europe.
The jump in production capacity in the region, to several hundred GWh, however, bodes well for a change of era. In the wake of precursors such as the Belgian chemical company Umicore, companies are investing in new parts of the value chain. Some even lend themselves to dreaming: what if the raw materials used in our electric cars were directly extracted from the European subsoil? In the Allier, the French Imerys imagines giving a second life to a kaolin quarry by extracting lithium. A real challenge, as there are so many obstacles to overcome in order to have new mining projects accepted. As a pledge of its good faith, Imerys presents a “responsible” extraction plan. It is probably from their virtue in ecological matters that the salvation of batteries made in Europe will come.