Debrecen4U October 7, 2026

Another Public Hearing Held on Battery Industry in Debrecen

Fire and chemical safety requirements, noise protection and air quality were among the issues raised by residents at a public hearing concerning CATL’s new battery plant. On 6 October, the Hajdú-Bihar County Government Office invited interested and affected parties to the Kölcsey Centre in connection with the environmental impact assessment procedure for a planned new battery repackaging and reassembly plant. Presentations by experts were interrupted by shouts from the audience.

Green Power Energy Debrecen Kft., a company owned by CATL, plans to establish its battery repackaging and reassembly plant in the Southern Industrial Park, next to CATL. According to the company register, the battery plant developed by Inpark is owned by the Hungarian State, with the Hungarian National Asset Management Company and the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency (HIPA) exercising the associated rights.

Inpark is present in Debrecen’s Southern Industrial Park as a state-owned industrial property developer and operator, with projects including industrial halls and sites suitable for accommodating major industrial investments. In connection with its Debrecen development, the company lists CATL among the significant investors in the area.

The public hearing was held held not by Mayor László Papp or the town clerk, but by the environmental protection authority of the Hajdú-Bihar County Government Office, which is headed by the government.

The first question was put by Enikő Tompa, Member of Parliament for the Tisza Party. According to CATL’s previous information, there will be no battery cell production, electrode production or electrolyte handling at the site. The planned Green Power Energy plant is subject to an environmental impact assessment procedure, of which the current official public hearing forms part.

First, the person responsible for public affairs at CATL Debrecen, the owner of Green Power Energy, briefly presented details of the planned investment, which is expected to create 154 jobs. The nearest residential building is 825 metres from the planned plant. “In addition to logistics activities, the plant will be involved in battery repackaging, battery reassembly, as well as machining and tool maintenance, said Balázs Szilágyi, CATL Debrecen’s Head of Public Affairs.

The environmental impacts of the planned plant were assessed by Deloitte, with the results summarised by experts from the consultancy. “Green Power and CATL had no objection to this, but we considered it important not to look only at the emissions of a single plant, because the impact affecting the surrounding population and wildlife is the cumulative impact, rather than the current, momentary impact of one particular plant,” said Judit Kerényi, Sustainability and Climate Protection Manager at Deloitte Hungary.

Comments could also be submitted before the public hearing, and these questions were put to CATL and the authorities’ experts first. The questions submitted by email concerned, among other things, the publication of measurement data, the proximity of residential areas, and disaster management, fire safety and chemical safety requirements. Balázs Szilágyi highlighted in response that CATL employs 41 professional firefighters and is prepared for extraordinary accidents.

The environmental impacts of the planned plant were assessed by Deloitte, with the results summarised by experts from the consultancy. According to the experts, alongside assessing cumulative impacts, it is also essential to establish a system for continuously monitoring the plant and its surroundings. “We recommended air quality monitoring, we recommended water monitoring and, obviously, we recommended noise monitoring. There is nothing to monitor in terms of waste but an accurate record must be kept of the waste generated, including who it was handed over to and for what purpose,” said Róbert Reininger, environmental expert at Deloitte Hungary.

Following the questions submitted previously in writing, Enikő Tompa, Member of Parliament for Debrecen, was the first to speak. She said that they did not support any further expansion and called for substantive answers and strict monitoring. “I expect the Government Office to inspect, ask questions, request data, carry out measurements, hold people to account and act as strictly as possible if any breach of the rules occurs, because it must be made clear that there is no special procedure or exemption – nobody is entitled to one,” said Enikő Tompa.

István Apáti, Deputy Leader of the Mi Hazánk Movement, also criticised battery-industry plants, after which the next person to speak noted that, in his view, the residents should be the ones asking the questions at the public hearing.

The proportion of Chinese factory workers also came up at the public hearing, to which the CATL representative responded. “In the case of CATL in Hungary, which includes this limited company as well, we consider the presence of a significant number of Chinese employees to be temporary. In two or three years, we expect the proportion of employees sent from China to fall to 10 per cent,” said Balázs Szilágyi, Head of Public Affairs.

Responding to a question, Balázs Szilágyi said it was not true that CATL had received HUF 320 billion in state support. They had received a total of HUF 7 billion in support, while they had already paid several times that amount in taxes to the state budget.

In response to a question from a resident of Szepes, Attila László Pozsonyi, Head of the Environmental Protection Department, explained in relation to safety distances that, since the facility in question would not be a waste storage facility or hazardous waste storage facility but the plant’s own storage area, no mandatory construction distance from residential areas applies to it.

The presentations and answers were interrupted by shouts from the audience, with Some people loudly rejecting battery industry investments. The public hearing ended at 9:00 p.m., an hour later than the scheduled 8:00 p.m. finish.

Source: dehir.hu | Photo credit: Debrecen városa (Facebook)