Amara Raja to set up one of India’s largest Lithium-ion cell giga corridor at Rs 9,500cr in Telangana

HYDERABAD: In what is touted as one of India’s largest investments in advanced cell chemistry, Amara Raja Batteries Limited (ARBL) is a lithium ion battery making giga corridor in Telangana at an investment of Rs 9,500 crore over the next 10 years. The investment is Amara Raja group’s largest till date and is cumulatively bigger than all the investments made by the group in its 37-year history.

The proposed Amara Raja Giga Corridor, for which the Amara Raja group inked an MoU with the Telangana government on Friday, includes an advanced energy research and innovation centre called Amara Raja E-Hub at Shamshabad and manufacturing facilities at Divitipally in Mahbubnagar district.

The manufacturing facilities include a lithium cell giga factory with an ultimate capacity of up to 16GWh and a battery pack assembly unit of up to 5GWh. The entire project is slated to create around 4,500 direct jobs when fully operational, including around 800 jobs in the innovation centre.

The Amara Raja E-Hub will be equipped with advanced laboratories and testing infrastructure for material research, prototyping, product life cycle analysis and proof of concept demonstration and will cater to not just the development needs of Amara Raja Group but will also be open to other players in the energy and mobility ecosystem.

As part of giga scale manufacturing of advanced cell technology products, Amara Raja would be first establishing a commercial scale pilot plant at Divitipally followed by its first giga scale cell production facility.

The first phase of the project will entail an investment of Rs 1,500-2,000 crore and will see the Andhra Pradesh based battery maker set up the E-Hub by 2024 and the initial manufacturing facilities by 2025, ARBL chairman and managing director Jayadev Galla.

Galla termed the strategic partnership with the Telangana government as a “giant leap” for Amara Raja and said it will bring in the impetus for innovations in sustainable technologies for the whole region, in addition to generating employment opportunities.

Pointing out that Telangana has been a frontrunner in adopting sustainability, Telangana industries minister KT Rama Rao said it was a proud moment for the state to welcome the country’s largest ever investment in the lithium-ion cell manufacturing sector.

“Our aim is to become the most electrified state in India, and having a giga factory in Telangana further strengthens our aspiration to become an EV manufacturing hub and spearhead the EV revolution in India,” KTR said.

Elaborating on the investments, Vikramaditya Gourineni, executive director-new energy business, ARBL, said: “Amara Raja envisions the E-hub to serve as a much-needed catalyst for multi-stakeholder collaboration and fostering entrepreneurship in these emerging sectors, in line with the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ vision of the Indian government.”

“This latest step is in line with the ‘energy & mobility’ roadmap that we laid out last year. Our ambition is to develop a robust Indian ecosystem with R&D, incubation, testing, and manufacturing – a giga corridor for emerging technologies in energy and mobility,” Gourineni added.

The investments will be made by ARBL through its wholly-owned subsidiary Amara Raja Advanced Cell Technologies Pvt Ltd, which was set up last month as part of the group’s strategy to emerge as an energy and mobility enterprise.

Amara Raja has already been working on Li-ion cell chemistries specifically suited for Indian subcontinent conditions, and already supplies lithium battery packs and chargers to some two and three-wheeler OEMs from a pilot facility at Tirupati.