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French startup Verkor plans to build a large plant
The French startup Verkor held a round of financing, which resulted in the attraction of 25 millions euro. Among the investors of the battery manufacturing company are the German Siemens Corporation and Societe Generale Bank from France.
The funds will be used to build a modern plant to produce batteries for Renault Corporation, which is a client of Verkor. Before that, the last time the company arranged a round of financing was in 2021, then managed to attract 100 million euros. It should be noted that Verkor, unlike most battery developers, aims to build its own production facilities. Thus, the company makes a serious contribution to the development of the European market of batteries for electric vehicles. This step will help the region to compete with Asian manufacturers who hold leading positions in the global market.
According to the European Battery Alliance, the amount of investment needed to develop the European battery industry will reach 250 billion euros by 2025. By that time, at least three large battery production plants should be operating in France alone. Verkor is confident that their project will be able to meet the growing demand. According to the head of the startup, the construction of a large plant in Dunkirk will be an important stage in the company’s development and will enable it to provide high-quality products to its customers. It is known that the capacity of the plant will be 16 GWh, it will be located in Dunkirk, and will provide more than 1200 jobs. It is expected that battery production will start here in 2025 and will be used by Renault Corporation to equip its electric cars.
For Verkor, this project is extremely important, since last year the startup produced batteries in its laboratory located in Grenoble. The production capacity is only 2 batteries per day, which is extremely low considering the increasing demand for components for the promising market of electric vehicles. Now Verkor has launched an innovation center, which will soon produce several thousand batteries per day and supply them to Renault for testing.
The production of batteries using technology from Verkor has a carbon footprint of 4-5 times smaller than that of products made in China. The company achieved this result by digitizing a large number of operations and using vertical integration for production processes.
Verkor is now actively recruiting investors to build the plant, as the allocated funds are still not enough to launch the project at full capacity and speed up its completion. In addition, the startup is working with various government agencies to gain support from the French government.