With a raw battery materials supply to rival anywhere in the world, Africa seems the perfect place to build a lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant, yet North America, Europe and Asia have been the locations of choice— until now.
The Megamillion Energy Company aims to be Africa’s first large-scale producer of lithium-ion batteries and plans to build a 32GWh per year facility by 2028 for both the energy storage and electric vehicle markets.
The company will start with a 20,000m2pilot plant in the Coega Special Economic Zone in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, next year. The 200MWh manufacturing facility will be capable of producing around 10 million lithium-ion cells per year, say the firm.
The main focus will be to produce affordable cells that can be used in energy storage systems throughout Africa, with MegaMillion working with technology partners and pioneers from Asia.
The cells will use nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) chemistry. The firm claims the 26x80mm cells will have a capacity of 6200mAh and weigh 111 grams.
Nechan Naicker, the founder and CEO of the company, said Africa’s time had come because producing lithium-ion batteries on African soil made sense due to critical minerals such as manganese and cobalt being found abundantly in Africa.
He said: “It doesn’t make sense that if sub-Saharan Africa has over 80% of the world’s manganese, over 60% of the world’s cobalt, the world’s largest reserves of fluorspar that the lithium-ion battery value chain is not localised on African soil.
“Furthermore, localised minerals beneficiation and cell manufacturing will result in a lower overall cost of batteries, encouraging a greater penetration of affordable energy storage solutions throughout Africa.”
According to MeagMillion, the South African Department of Trade and Industry has set aside more than 400 hectares of land in Coega to accommodate the making of the battery powders for NMC and lithium-manganese-oxide battery chemistries, assemble battery packs, as well as recycling the end-of-life battery products.