Shanghai (ZXZC)- Sunwoda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., Ltd. (“Sunwoda EVB”) will sign an agreement with the government of Shifang, a county-level city of China's Sichuan province, for a power battery manufacturing project, according to an announcement issued on March 17 by Sunwoda Electronic Co., Ltd. (“Sunwoda”), the parent of Sunwoda EVB.

Photo credit: Sunwoda

Under the project, Sunwoda EVB will invest 8 billion yuan ($1.26 billion) in building a power battery and energy storage battery plant in Shifang city with an annual production capacity of 20GWh. Upon completion of the construction, the facility will focus on manufacturing cells, modules, packs, and battery systems for power batteries and energy storage batteries.

Sunwoda EVB will build a project company to manage the building works. According to Sunwoda's announcement, the project company will rent industrial plants and auxiliary facilities covering 250,000 square meters from a platform company backed by Shifang's government. The construction is set to begin in 2022 and be completed within around 12 months.

This was the second significant project Sunwoda announced this year for battery capacity expansion. On March 11, Sunwoda EVB entered into an agreement with Zhuhai municipal government for the plan to plow 12 billion yuan ($1.89 billion) in the construction of a 30GWh battery manufacturing base in the city of Guangdong province.

For the first two months of 2022, Sunwoda EVB recorded a power battery installed capacity of 0.46GWh, accounting for 1.55% of China's total volume, according to the data from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance.