Japan's Suzuki Motor Corporation plans to open lithium-ion battery plant in India

Japan's Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC) is planning to open lithium-ion battery plant in India along with its partners Toshiba and Denso, Suzuki Chairman Osamu Suzuki announced on Thursday.

The company along with its partners will also invest around Rs 1,150 crore for a new unit to produce lithium ion batteries, which will essentially be providing electric batteries and electric packs for cars manufactured by Maruti Suzuki and Suzuki Motor Corporation.

The batteries will be used for "hybrid vehicles manufactured in India and export these genuinely manufactured in India vehicles to international market", Suzuki said.

The plant, which will be commissioned from 2020, will also be open to supplying batteries to other manufactures as part of a Vendor-OEM arrangement.

Suzuki will hold 50 percent stake, followed by Toshiba that will have 40 percent stake and the remaining 10 percent will be owned by Denso.

Osamu Suzuki said that the company will be setting up the third manufacturing line in Hansalpur, Gujarat for which the company will be investing additional Rs3,200 crore and will create over 10,000 jobs.

"We will also construct a hospital and school near Hanslapur facility," Suzuki added.

The Hansalpur-based plant, Suzuki Motor Corp's first wholly-owned unit in India, will have a production capacity of 2.5 lakh units annually. Once the third plant starts functioning fully, the SMC's Gujarat plant will have a total capacity of 7.5 lakh units per annum.

Currently, the first plant at Hansalpur produces premium hatchback Baleno. The second plant along with the engine and transmission units is expected to go on stream in 2019.

Last week Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava had stated that SMC was also considering setting up a fourth production line of 2.5 lakh units at Hansalpur plant to take its total capacity to a million units.