The start of the Lotte Energy Materials megaplant is imminent

The first preliminary works could coincide with the visit to Tarragona of the leadership of the South Korean multinational to present the project, scheduled at the end of the month

 Managers of the Asian multinational have already been working  on site  for weeks at Camp de Tarragona, and members of the company's leadership are scheduled to visit Mont-roig in the last week of October for the official presentation of the project in Catalonia, already announced. next day the 23rd. In the absence of closing the last bureaucratic issues related to the acquisition of the land - the urban planning agreement, which has required the modification of the Urban Planning Plan (POUM), was approved in mid-September by the Plenary Session of the City Council from the town of Baix Camp -, there is even speculation that the first earthworks on the plots of the Els Comellarets industrial estate will coincide with the visit to the regions of Tarragona by the top managers of Lotte Energy Materials.

Thanks to the consideration of a strategic project by the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (Miteco), the deadlines are being shortened as much as possible with the idea that the construction of the first plant begins sooner of ending the year. "All the deadlines for impact reports, permits, licenses... are reduced by half, so the processes go very quickly; it is a strategic company, not only in Tarragona, but in Europe since there is no something similar today; those that exist are small, and Lotte's intention is to build here in the coming years the largest production center in the world to supply the European market... We are really very proud to have an opportunity like this in Camp de Tarragona", confirms the territorial director of Business and Labor of the Generalitat in Tarragona, Jordi Fortuny.

The initial investment is estimated at 400 million euros. The recent modification of the POUM allows the industrial use of Lotte's productive activity in Els Comellarets, in addition to adjusting the construction heights and allowing the installation of renewable energies to supply the factories. "They have been long and complex negotiations, but we are very satisfied to continue meeting expectations," summarizes the mayor of Mont-roig, the socialist Fran Morancho.

The South Korean company has hired the IDP engineering group, one of the most powerful in Spain, which is drafting the basic and executive projects of a 44-hectare industrial plant that includes the factory, an intelligent warehouse, a treatment plant, a waste treatment, an R&D center, a corporate building and an electrical substation, in addition to the development of the entire land. In early 2023 it was also announced that Lotte will develop a 96-hectare solar park to supply power to its facilities.

Value chain

Lotte Energy Materials, a specialist in the manufacture of ultra-thin copper sheets for lithium batteries, is a subsidiary of Lotte Chemical and the giant Lotte Group, one of the world's largest conglomerates for the sale of chemical products. Last September, the company confirmed from Seoul that it will double the initial planned investment, reaching 1.2 billion and 600 jobs in several phases. The first plant is expected to be operational in 2025 with 200 employees and an annual production capacity of 30,000 tons of elecfoil.

"It is clearly the investment model that Catalonia needs to consolidate a new value chain and position ourselves as a benchmark for mobility in southern Europe," assesses the  Minister  of Business and Work, Roger Torrent. In this sense, the head of Digitalization and Digital Solutions at Applus Idiada, José Manuel Barrios, considers that the Lotte project is excellent news for Tarragona due to the global trend to produce certain critical components as close to the vehicle assembly points as possible. complete, "with the criterion of proximity to the source of final production." "This investment is in that line, favored by the wave of new factories planned under the umbrella of the electric vehicle PERTE."

For its initial plan, the new Lotte Energy Materials will receive 18.2 million from the PERTE of the electric vehicle, as a member of the so-called  Future: Fast Forward project  promoted by Seat and Volkswagen. Lotte Energy Materials participates through its subsidiary IMS Technology. In fact, the equidistance that the municipality has between the Seat plants in Martorell and the one that Volkswagen plans in Sagunto has especially weighed in the choice of Mont-roig del Camp. Lotte Energy Materials already has clients such as Volkswagen or Northvolt, LG Energy Solution and Samsung SDI, among others. 

"It could - Barrios maintains - even generate a pull effect; if leading companies in a certain technology establish themselves, industrial suppliers can be attracted. This is the effect that manufacturers have always produced... but now certain components have the same force, or even more than the assembler, for example the battery manufacturer... In fact, brands like BYD or Tesla are good examples, since they start by manufacturing the batteries, which is the heart of the vehicle, as the combustion engines".

230,000 tons of elecfoil in 2027

The landing of the Asian company in the Tarragona region is part of a global strategy by Lotte Energy Materials to reach a production capacity of 230,000 tons per year in 2027 with a well-woven logistics supply chain based on the three axes that mark its operational bases: currently, the former ILJIN Materials (acquired by Lotte last March) has an annual production capacity of copper sheets of about 60,000 tons, with manufacturing plants in Iksan (South Korea) and Malaysia , with 1,000 employees and a turnover of 35.79 million dollars. Today it is the fourth largest producer of Elecfoil in the world (10%-13% of the total), in competition with the Korean company SK Nexilis and the Chinese companies Watson and Chang Chun. This growth plan includes, in addition to the 25,000 tons initially planned in Mont-roig, and the 36,000 that Lotte Battery Materials, the subsidiary of the Lotte group in the United States, plans to manufacture in a new factory in Kentucky starting in 2025. .