(Yicai) Sept. 23 -- Chinese power battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology has said its new battery cell plant in Debrecen, Hungary has officially started trial production.

This phase aims to debug, optimize, and validate production equipment and manufacturing processes, in preparation for mass production, CATL said yesterday. The Debrecen facility is CATL’s second battery plant in Europe and its largest overseas manufacturing base.

Plans for the Debrecen plant were first unveiled in August 2022, including a total investment of about EUR7.34 billion (USD8.38 billion), a facility area of 221 hectares, and a planned total production capacity of 100 gigawatt-hours.

The plant started producing battery modules in the autumn of 2024, and the cumulative output has reached 537,000 sets, but the facility has been beset by increasing friction with authorities in the country and local concerns about the environmental impact.

Production was halted last month following a safety incident involving workers’ exposure to nickel, and the government of Hungary also announced that it would suspend preferential simplified licensing treatment for what it described as “illegal battery plants.”

In response, CATL stated that before the battery cell factory use license was approved, the Hungarian Hajdu-Bihor State Government Office had regularly conducted on-site inspections of the Debrecen factory and continued to follow up on issues that had previously caused concern to local residents. The regulatory authorities also confirmed that the company had completed all rectification work identified during the review for the permit.

In August, CATL obtained the factory use permit and the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control permit, and started trial production of battery cells after completing all the legal prerequisites.

Operation at CATL’s first overseas plant in Thuringia, Germany began in early 2023, and the factory achieved profitability on a yearly basis for the first time in 2025. The Debrecen plant will serve leading European car firms such as Mercedes Benz, BMW, Stellantis, and Volkswagen, CATL said.

Editor: Tom Litting