(Yicai Global) June 16 -- German chemicals giant BASF plans to expand its battery materials production in China to meet surging demand from the electric vehicle industry.

BASF Shanshan Battery Materials, a joint venture with Chinese battery materials supplier Shanshan, will hike annual production capacity at its plants in Changsha, Hunan province, and Shuizuishan in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, to 100,000 tons of cathode active materials, its parent company announced yesterday.

The new production lines are expected to start up in the fourth quarter of this year and make materials such as high-nickel and ultra-high-nickel nickel-cobalt-manganese oxide for polycrystalline and single crystalline, as well as manganese-rich NCM products, BASF said in a statement.

“Our manganese-rich products are well balanced in cost-performance compared to other ternary cathode materials and offer customers a higher security on lower metal cost as manganese is the most abundantly available metal compared to cobalt or nickel, which have recently been subject to significant price increases and fluctuations,” said Peter Schuhmacher, president of BASF’s catalysts division.

Last August, Ludwigshafen-based BASF bought a 51 percent stake in Shanshan’s battery materials subsidiary Hunan Shanshan Energy Technology, which then changed its name. The JV has four plants and more than 1,600 employees.

China is BASF’s second-biggest market. In the first three months of 2022, revenue from the Chinese market jumped 22 percent to EUR3.2 billion (USD3.3 billion) from a year earlier, according to its latest financial report. Total revenue climbed 19 percent to EUR23.1 billion (USD24.1 billion).

Editor: Futura Costaglione