Swedish rolled aluminium firm Gränges AB announced this week a SEK600 million (US$58 million) investment in increasing its aluminium battery foil production over the next two years at its Finspång plant.
Gränges says it aims to increase its market share of the quickly growing demand for battery and electrification components in both North America and Europe. The firm says it expects demand to grow around 25 percent per year for the next several years.
Jörgen Rosengren, CEO of Gränges, said in a press release that this is the next step in an initiative it began two years ago.
“Gränges started to invest in this area in 2021. Recently, we have experienced very high interest in our battery and electrification solutions from battery manufacturers and automotive OEMs. Our market launch plan for battery cathode foil is ambitious: Asia in 2022, Europe in 2023 and Americas in 2024. A recently made agreement with a leading global battery manufacturer consumes our initially planned production capacity in Europe. To keep up a high pace, we are now investing in doubling our capacity for the European market.”
William B. Shannon, SVP for Gränges’ Global Battery Foil Program, noted that his firm is uniquely qualified to meet the growing need for aluminium battery foil.
“Gränges has unique and unmatched advantages contributing to the strong customer interest we’re now seeing: our global footprint and strong regional presence, our high ambition and proven performance in sustainability, and our deep technical knowhow. We aim to take a leading position within battery components, such as battery foil, casing and thermal management components. The investment in Finspång is a very exciting step towards that goal.”
Begun in 1873 in Stockholm, Sweden as Trafik AB Grängesberg-Oxelösund, Gränges AB was resurrected in 2013 as a private company specializing in rolled aluminium heat exchangers. It employs almost 1,800 employees at the present time at two plants – one in Finspång, Sweden, that opened in its present configuration in 1972, and a second in Shanghai, China, opened in 1996. The firm boasts a total nameplate capacity of 420 thousand metric tons per annum and an annual sales total of SEK13 billion (US$1.35 billion).
