Initially announced in December 2021, the EcoPro BM plant will produce cathodes for electric car batteries and will create jobs for more than 600 people.

A South Korean company is building a factory in Debrecen’s Southern Economic Zone at the cost of HUF 270 billion (€700 million). The plant will be built opposite the Vitesco Technologies plant, north of the Semcorp plant. It was the second-largest investment agreed upon in Hungary in 2021.

The structure of the EcoPro BM plant in Debrecen is already under construction. 

The plant being built in the Southern Economic Zone is EcoPro BM Co.’s first investment outside South Korea. In Debrecen, they will produce 108,000 tonnes of cathode raw material a year, enough for 1 million 350,000 electric car batteries, and their biggest customer is expected to be CATL, which is building a battery factory a few hundred metres away. A 44-hectare site in the industrial park has been purchased for the factory.

The company will create 631 new jobs in the city, and the plant is expected to be ready in the first quarter of 2024.

EcoPro was founded in 1998 and has been a regular supplier to Samsung since 2008, but also works with Hyundai Heavy Industries. The demand for high nickel cathode materials has increased many times over, especially with the rise of electric vehicles, and the company is looking to meet this demand. The cathode is one of the four main components of a battery and is essential for battery performance.

Krones and Vitesco Technologies already have plants in the Southern Economic Zone, as do Deufol’s factory and the logistics centre of BHS Trans Ltd. Semcorp’s separator film plant will be completed soon, as will the Halms plant.

In addition, a large bus factory of ITK Holding and the Chinese battery factory of CATL is planned to be built there as well.

Source and Photo credit: dehir.hu