India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) hosted the third India Battery Manufacturing and Supply Chain Summit on January 23, 2024, in Hyderabad. The two-day summit focused on discussing the facets of indigenous battery manufacturing in the country.
At this event, Amara Raja President, Mr Vijayanand Samudrala announced that the company shall have a giga factory complex of three to four individual factories manufacturing battery cells in two, NMC and LFP chemistries and two formats, cylindrical and prismatic. The company is aiming for 16GWh of lithium-ion battery cell capacity and up to 5GWh of battery pack assembly capacity. The first phase of the giga factory will be operational by the end of 2025 in the Mahbubnagar district of Telangana.
Amara Raja will also set up an R&D facility called E Positive Energy Lab in Hyderabad, which will have 3,00,000sqft of built-up area and have a significant portion of the area dedicated to collaborating with customers, suppliers and others. Mr Samudrala referred to his giga factory visits across Europe, China, South Korea and other countries to showcase the importance of an ecosystem rather than just a standalone manufacturing facility. Amara Raja is the company behind battery brands like Amaron, GenPro, PowerZone and more.
Mr Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries & Commerce (I&C) and IT, Govt. of Telangana was the keynote speaker at the summit. He referred to the Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, which has a target of 150GWh ACC manufacturing capacity by 2030. Mr Ranjan expressed his optimism about meeting the targets and said India might even exceed it.
