A Belgian company called Umicore has officially opened a factory in the Polish city of Nysa for the production of materials that will later be used for the production of batteries for electric cars. There are few such plants in Europe, and Umicore says the Polish unit is Europe’s largest in the segment.

The factory has 240 employees, with plans to reach 400 by the end of 2023. The factory produces cathode materials. Nysa is a city with a population of 50,000 inhabitants, located in the Opole region in southern Poland.

The plant’s annual production capacity will reach 20 GWh by the end of 2023 and 40 GWh, with a long-term goal of reaching 200 GWh by 2030, meaning the various components produced there could reach 3 million cars.

Umicore has a plant in Finland, manufacturing operations in Asia and is looking to build a facility in Canada.

In a battery cell, the cathode is the negative pole and the anode is the positive pole.

Why are batteries for electric cars so expensive? Because the components from which they are made are expensive, and the most expensive part of the cell is the cathode because of the metals used, such as cobalt, lithium or nickel. These materials are extracted from mines located in various places around the world, and the costs are high also due to the fact that they must then be extensively processed to turn them into ultra-pure chemical components.