They include power battery makers such as Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) and BTR (Jiangsu) New Material Technology Ltd, as well as electric vehicle makers such as BYD and Nio.
Chinese electric battery maker BTR New Material Group (835185.BJE) has been given the go-ahead by the Moroccan government to build a factory near Tangier to produce a key component, the cathode.
The new plant will be able produce 50,000 tons of cathode for lithium-ion batteries a year, Shenzhen-based BTR said yesterday. Baoan also released a statement on the same day.
"Since December 2019, our power battery factory has expanded to 10 phases in Yibin, showing an unprecedented speed," said Zhu Yunfeng, general manager of Sichuan Times New Energy Technology Co Ltd, CATL's subsidiary in Sichuan.
Amid the fast expanding market of new energy vehicles in China－with NEV sales taking up 53 percent of global market share last year－demand for power batteries is also on the rise, leading tech gurus and the government to explore better ways of expansion.
Many Chinese producers of lithium-ion batteries stepped up overseas expansion this year in response to fierce competition at home. For example, Gotion High-Tech announced it would build a battery plant with an annual capacity of 100 gigawatt hours in Morocco. Domestic competition also led to low capacity utilization rates.