Ningde Era builds the world's largest battery factory in Germany

China Power Battery Unicorn Company Ningde Times (300750. SZ) Zoom in again. Matthias Zentgraf (Matthias Zentgraf), president of Ningde Era Europe, told an automotive seminar in Bochum, Germany, that Ningde Era will build the world's largest battery factory in Elford, Germany, according to foreign media reports. In the summer of 2018, the Ningde Times revealed that it would build a battery plant in Elford, but the plant's production capacity was planned to be 14 gigawatt-hours (1 gigawatt-hour equals 1 million kilowatt-hours). Now, the Ningde era has revised its previous plans to more than sevenfold increase capacity. Under the new plan, Ningde Times will invest about 240 million euros in the 82-hectare battery factory, which will create 600 new jobs there. It is expected that 93 containers will be shipped out every day when production capacity reaches 100 gigawatt-hours. To this end, the new Ningde-era factory will also be linked to Germany's local rail network. Zentgraf said the number of pre-orders for the Ningde Times German plant is still increasing, and that Ningde Times also wants to stay ahead of competition in Europe. The Ningde Times German plant signed its first order with BMW in July 2018, worth billions of euros. Since then, Daimler, PSA, Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover have also become customers. In January 2019, Tesla, the world's leading electric car maker desperate for more capacity, began construction of a new plant in Shanghai, just a month after Ningde Times decided to build it in Germany The Ningde Times German plant, which is investing in the world's largest battery plant, will produce seven times as much as Tesla's superplant, which currently has a capacity of 20 gigawatt-hours, in the future. It is worth noting that customers at Ningde Times German plants may not be confined to European customers. Tesla's batteries are currently supplied by Panasonic, a leading competitor in the Ningde era, and Panasonic also supplies batteries to Japanese car makers. But Honda, the mainstream Japanese carmaker, has announced a partnership with the Ningde Times to develop an electric car that Honda sees as key to its global strategy. The partnership will develop batteries and related technologies for the new electric car, which Honda will launch in China and elsewhere in the first half of 2020. Ningde Times also confirmed to First Finance that it had entered the Honda supply chain. Revenue for the first three quarters of 2018 was 19.136 billion yuan, up 59.9% year-on-year, and non-net profit was 1.985 billion yuan, up 88.71% year-on-year, according to the company's third quarterly report disclosed by Ningde Times. However, it is noteworthy that the Company's gross profit margin has continued to decline over the past three years, from 43.71% in 2016 to 31.38% in the first three quarters of 2018. Gross profit margin declined, mainly due to the rise in the price of raw cobalt and product prices. According to the first financial carding, in 2015, 2016 and 2017, the average price of Ningde Times Power Battery Sales System was 2.28 yuan/watt-hour, 2.06 yuan/watt-hour and 1.41 yuan/watt-hour, respectively. Although However, the battery cost has been declining, 1.33 yuan/watt-hour, 1.13 yuan/watt-hour and 0.91 yuan/watt-hour, respectively, but the margin is still affected. Gross profit per watt-hour was RMB0.95 in 2015, RMB0.9 in 2016 and RMB0.5 in 2017. Shen Wanhongyuan's new research paper is optimistic about the future of the Ningde era, pointing out that the core competitiveness of new energy battery manufacturing comes from technology and cost. On the technical side, Ningde Era inherits the ATL manufacturing tradition and refined management, and leads the world in the mass production of battery pack energy density. On the cost side, the company independently grasps the four major material technologies, adopts contract manufacturing mode to reduce supply costs, and continues to outperform the industry in gross profit margin and accounting period management. In 2017, only China's Ningde Times, Japan's Panasonic, South Korea's LG Chemicals and Samsung SDI will be able to supply global power batteries. ShenWanHongYuan research newspaper think, In the face of the coming global competition, Ningde era is expected to protect three fight two spell boss. In the 11th batch of catalogues issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the energy density of battery system in Ningde Times reached 170 watt-hours/kg, and the power battery for Dongfeng Fengshen Pure Electric Car reached 508 km, which also set a record for the highest energy density of system in China at present. Professor Yin Chengliang, vice dean of Shanghai Jiaotong University Automotive Engineering Research Institute, is relatively optimistic. The cost of lithium-ion batteries is likely to continue to fall, he told Caijing First, a leading power battery company in China that relies on its own research and development and policies Support, the cost of the future has more room for reduction. Currently, the Ningde era battery is mainly NMC532, the battery's cathode material is 20% cobalt. Once the NCM811 battery is introduced, the cobalt content of the battery will be reduced by more than half per kilowatt-hour, and the battery energy density will be increased, which means that the performance will be improved and the cost will be reduced.