Geelong to be home to Australia’s largest electric-car battery plant

Australia no longer manufactures cars, but local factories could soon be playing a key part in the burgeoning electric-vehicle industry.

US-based company Recharge Industries has announced it plans to build Australia's first large-scale electric-car battery plant, and says it has tasked engineering consultancy firm Accenture to help build the facility at Geelong's Avalon Airport, as first reported by The Driven.

Located an hour south-west of Melbourne, Recharge Industries says the factory will produce up to 30 gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries annually by the end of this decade, with the company expecting to employ between 1500 and 2000 workers.

For context, last year Ford confirmed it had secured 60GWh of battery supply to build an estimated 600,000 electric vehicles in 2023.

With financial backing provided by its parent company, US investment firm Scale Facilitation, the company says construction of the Geelong facility is expected to begin in the second half of 2023.

Recharge Industries has also named Charge CCCv (C4V) as its technical partner, which it says will help "accelerate planning, engineering, and construction" by using C4V's supply chain, blueprints, and technology concepts.

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"Establishing a sovereign manufacturing capability to produce state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery cells is critical to Australia’s renewable energy economy – meeting national demand, generating export income and securing supply chains," Recharge Industries CEO Rob Fitzpatrick said in media a statement.

"Our factory, which we are building with the assistance of Accenture’s engineering and capital projects expertise and underpinned by C4V’s [intellectual property] and battery technology, will create thousands of jobs and attract large-scale investment from key players in Australia, the Indo-Pacific region, and other parts of the world," he said.

While the battery factory – if it is built – will be the largest in the country, would not be the first.

In 2021, Energy Renaissance's Newcastle facility opened, producing approximately 1.02GWh of storage capacity each year.