TCC Group Holdings Co (台泥) said its “gigafactory” manufacturing lithium-ion battery cells for electric aircraft and supercars caught fire yesterday, injuring at least 15 employees and firefighters, and causing unspecified financial losses.
The blaze broke out early yesterday morning, originating from the factory’s warehouse for semifinished battery products, TCC said in a statement.
The gigafactory, in Kaohsiung’s Siaogang District (小港), is operated by TCC subsidiary Molie Quantum Energy Corp (三元能源), it said.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
All the injured people were discharged from hospital in the afternoon, it said.
The damages would be covered by insurance and the company is assessing the effect on the factory’s operations, it added.
Molie Quantum Energy is a fully owned subsidiary of TCC’s battery arm E-One Moli Energy Corp (能源科技), focusing on producing ultra-high power cylindrical cells in the niche segment, which avoids the cutthroat general market in China. E-One Moli Energy sells its product under the Molicel brand.
E-One Moli Energy, which has an installed manufacturing capacity of 1.8 gigawatt-hours per year, supplies high-density lithium-ion battery cells used in supercars, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and power tools.
The unit also produces battery cells for backup battery units used in artificial intelligence devices, largely servers for global cloud service providers.
The battery business has not turned a profit, given its smaller production capacity, TCC said.
Green energy is one of the key elemenets of the company's transformation efforts in recent years, the company said.
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