One of Europe's first gigafactories will be set up in Teverola. And in the meantime, the line for industrial use is starting up
It will be one of the first factories of lithium ion cells and batteries for the industrial, storage and transport sectors in Europe: the Seri Industrial Group project is now at the finishing line. The testing phase has already begun for the plant built in Teverola (Caserta), in the factory acquired by the former Whirlpool in 2017. The inauguration is scheduled for February-March.
A goal and at the same time the starting point for an even more ambitious design, articulated in two stages. First, to create an integrated lithium-ion battery supply chain, from research to recycling. Then, explains Marco Civitillo, a member of the founding family of the group set up in 1999, to manufacture 'highly innovative' batteries for electric cars, the heart of the car of the future. To achieve this, Faam, the group's company, will be able to count on 427 million euros of public aid, out of the 570 million or so that Rome has pledged to allocate to five Italian companies, as part of the EU project to create a European car battery supply chain.
The reconversion of the ex-Whirlpool plant required an investment of about EUR 54 million: EUR 17 million provided by Invitalia, plus another EUR 20 million in subsidised financing. Seri put up the other 17 million, also through the capital raised through the stock market listing about a year ago. 'The plant,' explains Civitillo, 'will have a capacity of about 300 megawatts and will produce lithium batteries designed to customer requirements,' such as the development of batteries for marine and military applications.
The Teverola plant will employ 75 people, former Whirlpool employees retrained within the Seri group: 'Today,' explains Civitillo, 'there is no real know-how in this sector. The whole project has an added value, that of training skills that do not currently exist or are very scarce, whether workers, researchers or engineers". Born as an engineering company, the Seri group has grown through acquisitions to become a fully integrated operator along the lead-acid battery supply chain. From the construction of plants for recycling spent batteries, the activities have extended first to the production of semi-finished products (using the regenerated plastic of old batteries) and then to the production of the finished product, after the acquisition of Faam, in 2013, to finally arrive at the recovery of lead, the raw material from which everything starts again, in "a fully integrated circular economy model that has led us to be a leader in the production of batteries, especially for the industrial sector: forklift trucks, earth-moving machinery, storage, railways," Civitillo explains.
Official source: https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/caserta-raccoglie-sfida-batterie-ioni-litio-ACjpGABB
