China is building a lithium battery factory in Turkey

Jiangxi Ganfeng Battery Technology as a subsidiary of Ganfeng Lithium and Turkish battery manufacturer Yigit Aku will build a Turkish production line with an annual capacity equivalent to about five gigawatt-hours of energy, Reuters writes.

Chinese portal CnEVpost, which specializes in electric vehicles, announced that cooperation has been agreed upon in Turkey and globally and that the Chinese partner will invest 500 million dollars in the joint venture. Apart from the production line, the project includes packaging in Turkey.

Yigit Aku was founded in 1976 in Ankara and has four manufacturing plants and two research and development centers. It is the largest producer, exporter, and recycler of batteries in Turkey, and cooperates with more than 500 partners in more than 100 countries, Ganfeng said.

The agreed joint venture includes new scientific and development centers focusing on new technologies and the exchange of intellectual property of advanced lithium battery technologies.

It is, as stated, also about batteries for electric vehicles with solid (ASSB), instead of liquid electrolyte, high-power batteries for heavy vehicles, and batteries for maritime transport and aeronautics.

Ganfeng is one of the largest Chinese producers of lithium products for electric cars, the pharmaceutical industry, and aeronautics.

It also produces the first generation of hybrid batteries, a combination of solid electrolyte batteries (ASSB) and traditional lithium-ion batteries (LIB). ASSB batteries are considered more powerful and safer.

Turkey does not have large lithium reserves, but China has solid domestic reserves, a huge part of which is on the Tibetan Plateau. However, China is a major importer of lithium, mainly from Australia, Chile, and Argentina, and the largest processor of the metal in the world and the largest producer of lithium batteries.