Tier 1 supplier Valmet Automotive is launching its first lithium-ion battery pack production facility in Finland within months to supply the electric vehicle market.
The facility, in a former Nokia plant, is scheduled to start commercialisation around October-November in the municipality of Salo— where it will produce around 600,000 battery packs per year.
The company also broke ground on its €7 million (US$7.8m) Battery Test Center at Bad Friedrichshall, Germany, on 8 August.
The facility adds a further four state-of-the-art, 15×5 metre container-based AVL battery testbeds at the centre. Testing on cells, modules and complete battery systems is expected to begin by February 2020.
Dr Robert Hentschel, Valmet Automotive Engineering’s managing director, said: “We appear on the market as a development partner for companies in the automotive industry.”
“With our new test centre we are expanding much-needed test capacities in the industry for batteries and battery systems of electric vehicles.”
In addition to testing and prototyping, the company also operates body and powertrain development as well as battery system development in Bad Friedrichshall.
In 2017, Valmet Automotive and Chinese firm Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), entered into a strategic partnership in electric automotive solutions.
The partnership was created to ‘build capabilities to support the leading European automotive manufacturers and their suppliers by engineering electric vehicle drive train solutions and supplying battery packs to them”.
Image: ground-breaking ceremony at Battery Test Center at Bad Friedrichshal
