Reliance AGM 2023: RIL to establish end-to-end battery gigafactory by 2026

Mukesh Ambani addressing RIL's shareholders at the company's 46th AGM

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) will be establishing its battery gigafactory in India by 2026, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) Mukesh Ambani said at the conglomerate’s 46th Annual General Meeting (AGM) on August 28. The proposed gigafactory, which is expected to cater to Electric Vehicles (EVs), will also include a battery recycling facility.

As part of RIL's ambition to create an end-to-end battery ecosystem, the company had earlier announced plans to set up a gigafactory that will make battery packs, and will be a part of its Dhirubhai Green Energy Giga Complex at Jamnagar, Gujarat.

While addressing shareholders, Ambani said, “Our priority is to set up our battery gigafactory by 2026. It will manufacture battery chemicals, cells, and packs, going all the way up to containerised energy storage solutions, and will include a battery recycling facility to  deliver a truly integrated ecosystem.”

RIL will be involved in the production of the entire supply chain in the space — from battery materials to cells, to packs and Battery Management Systems (BMS) — and deliver "safe and reliable" batteries with “high energy density” and “fast charging capabilities”.

It may be recalled that during last year’s AGM, the RIL CMD had outlined the company’s plans to commence production of battery packs by 2023, and scale up to a fully-integrated 5 gigawatt hour (GWh) annual cell-to-pack manufacturing facility by 2024.  It will further scale up to a 50 GWh annual capacity by 2027.

Shedding light on the specifics of the battery, Ambani added, “We will start with  the LFP (lithium iron phosphate) battery, which has been proven at scale for its safety, stability, and life-span, and aim to produce LFP-based solutions at world-beating lifecycle costs.’’

RIL  had earlier indicated that battery manufacturing for EVs is one of the focus areas of its new energy business, in order to make a shift from fossil fuels. During June 2021, Reliance announced an investment of Rs 75,000 crore to be deployed towards its new energy business over the next three years.

“Simultaneously, we are focused on fast-track commercialisation of our sodium-ion battery technology. We will build on our technology leadership by industrialising sodium-ion cell production at a megawatt level by 2025, and rapidly build up to giga-scale thereafter,” Ambani explained.

It may be recalled that Reliance New Energy Solar Ltd (RNESL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of RIL, announced in August 2021 that it will invest $50 million in US-based Ambri Inc.  In December 2021, RNESL took over  Faradion, a  leading global sodium-ion battery technology company, for an enterprise value of GBP100 million.   With this acquisition, RIL aims to leverage Fardion’s technology at its proposed fully-integrated energy storage Gigafactory in Jamnagar.

In March 2022, RNESL signed an agreement to acquire the assets of Lithium Werks BV for $61 million, including funding for future growth. Lithium Werks is a cobalt-free lithium battery technology and manufacturing company, with operations in the US, Europe, and China, and it has customers worldwide.

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