CAPTION: 1,500 jobs at battery manufacturer CATL by the end of the year.(icture alliance/dpa)
The Chinese battery manufacturer CATL will ramp up production at its new plant in Arnstadt, in the eastern German state of Thuringia, in the second half of the year. "We are in the final spurt," said Matthias Zentgraf, president of CATL Europe, in Arnstadt upon receiving an operating permit from the state of Thuringia for the first expansion stage of the plant. This will have an initial capacity of 8 gigawatt hours. That would correspond to an annual capacity of batteries for about 120,000 e-cars, Zentgraf told dpa. The plant will supply all the major German automakers with battery cells for their e-cars, he added.
According to Zentgraf, 1,500 employees from the region will be hired by the end of the year. In addition, he said, there would be a few hundred specialists from China who would be deployed to install the production equipment and in the start-up phase of manufacturing, but who would not stay permanently. About 500 employees from the region are already on board, he said.
According to Thuringia’s Economics Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, a member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Chinese company's investment decision sends an important message about eastern Germany as an industrial location. Intel, for example, had also referred to CATL in its decision to locate factories in Magdeburg in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. The Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Germany, Carsten Schneider, called the battery factory an outstanding project in eastern Germany. The good reputation of the state administrations, which decided quickly, also contributed to the decision to locate there, Schneider told dpa.
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