France beat out competition from Germany and the Netherlands for ProLogium Technology Co’s (輝能科技) first overseas vehicle-battery plant with lobbying from French President Emmanuel Macron, deal sweeteners and competitive power prices, executives from the Taiwanese company said.
After narrowing a list of countries down from 13 to three, ProLogium said it this week settled on the northern French port city of Dunkirk for its second gigafactory and first outside Taiwan.
With production slated to begin in 2026, the factory would be the fourth battery plant in northern France, adding to an emerging specialized cluster central to Europe’s electric-vehicle industry.
Photo: REUTERS
Europe largely depends on batteries made in Asia for electric vehicles, and national leaders are offering incentives to kickstart the industry.
That has become more urgent since the US last year passed its US$430 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which includes major tax subsidies to cut carbon emissions while boosting domestic production and manufacturing.
Macron, who met with ProLogium chief executive officer Vincent Yang (楊思枬) at the start of the vetting process, was yesterday due to officially announce the 5.2 billion euros (US$5.7 billion) investment in Dunkirk.
ProLogium executive vice president Gilles Normand said that after Macron, a former investment banker, pitched Yang more than a year ago, French Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire followed up and helped make the company’s case with the European Commission for EU financial incentives.
“There was then the realization that there might be some interesting possibilities, which was maybe a little bit different from the cliches about France,” Normand told reporters.
ProLogium expects the project to create 3,000 jobs directly, and four times as many indirectly.
The emergence of an industrial cluster around the three battery plants already in the works was in itself an attraction, offering a critical mass of material suppliers and skilled workers, Normand said.
Also playing in France’s favor was its competitively priced zero-carbon electricity, produced by one of the biggest fleets of nuclear plants in the world, but also increasingly by offshore wind farms and solar.
Normand added that the government sweetened the deal with an incentives package, but could not give details while further subsidies were under review at the European Commission.
Macron’s government is eager to use the recent relaxation of EU state aid rules to offer tax breaks and other subsidies to encourage investment in green technologies.
He on Thursday announced that the government would offer a tax credit worth up to 40 percent of a company’s capital investment in wind, solar, heat-pump and battery projects.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS