SNECI reinforces its competencies in batteries’ industrialization

With many countries planning or proposing registration bans on gasoline and diesel vehicles, carmakers all over the world claim to end the production of internal combustion engines sometime between 2025 and 2040. The majority of them foresee the termination of thermal engine manufacturing by 2035.

Given the EU’s “Fit for 55” climate package, Europe will be at the forefront of EV deployment. It will lead to a tremendous demand in battery capacity produced locally. For example, Stellantis has announced that it will solely require a total capacity of more than 260 GWh of battery cells by 2030, including more than 170 GWh in Europe. The group plans to produce batteries in 5 gigafactories in Europe and North America, partly in-house and partly outsourced.

Such an increase in demand has, in turn, resulted in the creation of several European EV battery players (ACC, Northvolt, Verkor, Italvolt, FAAM, Farasis, Morrow, Freyr, Britishvolt, FAAM, InoBat). These companies come in addition to the Asian ones that have already made or announced investments in European production (LG, Svolt, Samsung, CATL, SK Innovation, Envision).

Nowadays, though, more than 90% of the existing production capacities are still located in Asia, including nearly two-thirds in China only. Moreover, as the expertise is currently rather scarce in Europe, a big part of the battery supply chain remains in Asia too.

With its teams located all over China (mainly in Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Shenyang), SNECI provides various batteries’ industrialization services to local companies. Among them:

• Suppliers’ Audit based on OEMs’ or battery suppliers’ requirements or international standards;
• Project Management alongside Final Acceptance Tests for equipment machine suppliers;
• Supplier Development Rank-up to help suppliers achieve their action plan and match the expected performance levels;
• Supply Chain Management to assist Asian suppliers in the optimization and daily management of their deliveries to Europe.

In order to accompany the growth of battery companies in China, SNECI has hired talents coming from leading battery suppliers with expertise not only in the production process but also in the Tier2 suppliers. Coupled with our strong know-how in industrial assessment and rank-up, such expertise allows us to be a local relay to OEMs and battery suppliers in their industrialization.

“The EV trend is here to stay, which is why we have decided to expand our teams in batteries’ industrialization, especially given the fact that Europeans still cannot travel freely to China due to COVID-19 restrictions”, according to Future Cai, SNECI China’s Director. “When you see the recent announcements of GM’s recall on Bolt due to defective battery modules and the associated cost, you know that the OEMs will carefully review the quality of the batteries and be more intrusive at the components level.”