The official ceremony to herald the start of the operation of Shangluo New Material and Battery Industrial Park was held on May 31. The new industry cluster is situated in the High-Tech Development Zone of Shangluo, a city in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. The total investment in this project is estimated to amount to around RMB 1.09 billion.
According to the coverage by local news outlets, the battery industrial park spans an area of 108 ares and is being developed in three phases.The first phase, which entails a total investment of RMB 120 million, focuses on building an annual production capacity of 5,000MT for modified positive electrode materials for lithium-manganese-oxide batteries.Technically, the first phase was completed in June 2019 and has been in operation since then.The second phase, which entails a total investment of RMB 120 million, focuses on building a daily production capacity of 400,000 pieces for 18650 lithium-ion battery cells that are used to power electric vehicles.Currently, a production line capable of outputting 100,000 pieces every day has been set up and will enter operation this August.
The third phase, which entails a total investment of RMB 830 million and will begin soon, relates to building production capacity for other advanced battery materials and energy storage batteries.Specifically, production facilities will be set up for modified vanadium-based materials for positive electrode (10,000MT per year) and electrolyte additives (5,000MT per year).As for energy storage batteries, the planned production capacity is set at 2GWh annually.The third phase will also see the construction of a laboratory for developing novel materials that can be used in battery manufacturing.
Once completed, the value of the output from the battery industrial park is estimated to reach RMB 4 billion annually. Also, the annual taxable income from this project is estimated at RMB 200 million.
The coverage by local media outlets also indicates that the battery industrial park can leverage Shangluo’s rich deposit of vanadium ores and abundant supply of electricity to manufacture vanadium redox batteries that can be deployed either as standalone energy storage systems or integrated energy storage systems within power stations. Hence, local industry cluster can become much more effective in exploiting local resources while promoting green energy, ensuring sustainable development, and creating a circular economy.
With the mining and processing of vanadium ores as the starting point, the development of Shangluo’s industries now extends to the manufacturing of various types of batteries (e.g., vanadium redox and lithium-ion) and battery materials (e.g., electrolyte solutions, separator films, and electrode materials). Dozens of related companies such as BYD has already set up shop in the industrial park, thereby forming a multi-billion industry cluster and attaining a “higher quality” of economic development.
