Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Oct. 31 (Reuters)-Japan's Panasonic Holdings said on Monday that it would start building a new battery plant in Kansas in November and plan to start mass production by March 2025, targeting the fast-growing electric vehicle market in North America.

The energy division of the Panasonic Group, which supplies batteries to Tesla, said in July that it had chosen Kansas as the site of its new factory, mainly to supply batteries to Tesla. Join other battery suppliers to plan to make large-scale investments in the United States to comply with new tax breaks for electric vehicles and to meet potential large local demand.

Panasonic said in a statement that it expects an initial production capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours.

Kansas state officials said in July that the new plant would create as many as 4000 jobs and invest as much as $4 billion (about 29.08 billion yuan), subject to final approval from Panasonic's board of directors.

"as the global shift to electric vehicles accelerates, we are studying how to strengthen our battery production capacity in North America and meet the growing needs of our automotive partners," Panasonic President Kazuo Tadanobu said in a statement.

The company said the plant would produce lithium-ion battery units for its 2170 model electric vehicles.

The conglomerate also cut its full-year operating profit forecast for the year ending March 31 to 320 billion yen (15.744 billion yuan) from 360 billion yen (about 17.712 billion yuan). By contrast, the average forecast of 19 analysts is 349.9 billion yen (about 17.215 billion yuan).

Panasonic reported an 11% drop in operating profit in the second quarter, but performed better than analysts had expected.

According to Refinitiv, the company made an operating profit of 86.1 billion yen (about 4.236 billion yuan) in the three months to the end of September, while nine analysts predicted an average profit of 81.6 billion yen (4.015 billion yuan). A year ago, the company earned 96.8 billion yen (about 4.763 billion yuan).

Although sales in its energy business have increased, operating profit has declined due to higher prices of raw materials and logistics, as well as increases in production, development costs and fixed costs.

Its competitors Ningde Times and South Korea's Energy Solution reported strong battery profit growth after passing on some of their cost increases to customers.

Although best known for consumer electronics and appliances, Panasonic has focused in recent years on manufacturing parts and services for other companies, including batteries for Tesla electric vehicles.

Panasonic says it plans to triple to quadruple its battery capacity by 2029, with most of the increase in North America, CTOnews.com learned.

Panasonic is working hard to supply Tesla with larger batteries in the 4680 model, which will begin production in Japan in the next fiscal year.

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