China's Huayou Cobalt Gains After Hungarian Plant Lands Another Big Battery Materials Order

(Yicai) Nov. 26 -- Huayou Cobalt's shares rose after the major Chinese producer of lithium battery materials said its soon-to-be operational factory in Hungary had secured a nine-year deal to supply China's Eve Energy.Huayou Cobalt [SHA: 603799] climbed 1.6 percent to CNY61.48 (USD8.68) a share as of 1.25 p.m. in Shanghai today.Huayou Cobalt's Hungarian factory will supply around 127,800 tons of ultra-high-nickel ternary cathode materials to Eve Energy's local lithium battery plant from next year through 2035, the Zhejiang-based firm announced late yesterday. Around 126,500 tons of the total are expected to be supplied from 2027 through 2031, it noted.The announced supply amount is a preliminary figure, with the actual quantity subject to subsequent orders, Huayou Cobalt pointed out, without disclosing further details such as the value.Based on the current price of high-nickel ternary cathode material NCM811, which is around CNY166,000 (USD23,435) per ton, the order is worth about CNY21.2 billion (USD3 billion).The deal aims to meet the needs of end-users, specifically premium carmakers in Europe, Huayou Cobalt said. It enhances the company's market share and will help it to deeply embed within the European electric vehicle supply chain, strengthening its core competitiveness in the lithium battery industry, it pointed out.In September, Huayou Cobalt agreed to supply 164,000 tons of ternary precursor cathode materials to LG Energy Solution through the end of 2030, with its Hungarian factory to provide around 88,000 tons to the South Korean firm's plant in Poland.Huayou Cobalt plans to invest EUR1.3 billion (USD1.5 billion) to build the Hungarian factory, aiming to produce high-nickel ternary cathode materials for European clients. The project's first phase, with an investment of EUR252 million (USD292 million), will have an annual production capacity of 25,000 tons and will likely go live by the end of this year.Eve Energy's plant in Hungary, with a total investment of about CNY10 billion (USD1.4 billion), will likely become operational by 2027. It will produce 28 gigawatt-hours of large cylindrical ternary lithium batteries a year, with BMW Group's EV plant in Debrecen as its main customer.Editor: Martin Kadiev