Evergrande Group, one of China’s real estate giants, is aggressively moving into the electric car manufacturing sector, The Paper reported.
Its wholly-owned subsidiary, Evergrande New Energy Power Technology Co, has purchased a stake in Shanghai Cenat New Energy Co, a lithium-ion battery producer. The 1.059 billion-yuan deal makes it the largest shareholder with a stake of 58.07%, according to a company statement.
Shanghai Cenat New Energy was co-founded by the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, which is affiliated with the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, and the Japanese battery giant ENAX.
It is part of the first batch of qualified automotive battery makers approved by China, and also the first Chinese company to export battery products to Japan.
At present, it has four production bases in Shanghai city, Jiangxi, Guangxi and Jiangsu province. The company has more than 300 R&D experts globally and a technical team of more than 1,500 employees.
Evergrande said it will rapidly expand the company’s operational capacity and plans to set up several super-factories with annual production of 60GWh in 10 years.