Russia to launch its first Li-ion gigafactory in December

Russia is set to inaugurate its first lithium-ion battery production at scale next month, but its nascent new industry will initially live off imported cathode materials, because, despite the country having abundant production of battery metals nickel and cobalt, it still lacks its own supply of lithium.

The first Russian gigafactory in Neman, Kaliningrad Oblast, is set to launch into testing mode in mid-December, and will be ramped up through 2026, reaching full-scale production in 2027, a spokesperson for Tvel, a subsidiary of Russian state atomic corporation Rosatom, which built the plant, told Platts.

The 4-GWh plant will produce 50,000 lithium-ion batteries per year once it reaches design capacity. Its launch marks the birth of a new industry in Russia and the completion of one of Rosatom's two battery factory projects.

The two identical gigafactories, including the one currently under construction in the Moscow region, will supply manufacturers of cars, buses, ships, and urban infrastructure, and will be the center of battery materials demand in Russia.

Specifically, the gigafactories are expected to require approximately 10,000 metric tons of cathode active materials each, as Platts previously estimated, but these are likely to be imported until domestic CAMs production is well-established.

Nornickel is the only Russian company with the potential to develop such production that will be integrated into captive raw materials, as the company produces nickel and cobalt and has a joint venture with Rosatom that will become Russia's first lithium miner.

Polar Lithium -- Nornickel's 50-50 joint venture with Rosatom -- plans to commission in 2030 a mine and a concentrator for the enrichment of 2 million mt/year of ore from Russia's largest lithium-containing spodumene deposit, Kolmozerskoye, and a chemical and metallurgical plant producing 45,000 mt/year of lithium hydroxide and carbonate.

Also, in September 2024, Nornickel set up a Battery Technology Center in St. Petersburg with the goal of initially manufacturing up to 10 mt per year of CAMs using its own metals. However, the company has not yet started construction of the pilot plant, its spokesperson told Platts.

To the question of whether the investment decision is pending the launch of lithium mining at the end of the decade, if the company sees no sense in making CAMs without captive lithium, the spokesperson said that this was the intention.

"Although lithium could be sourced in China, we aim for our own lithium -- own CAMs bundle," he said, adding that economic feasibility and demand are also factored into consideration, meaning that sufficient capacity utilization of the gigafactory that is coming online will be important to justify the investment in a CAMs plant.

The Neman-based gigafactory will be able to provide batteries for up to 50,000 cars at full capacity, but so far, Russia's electric vehicle output would currently need only a small fraction of that supply. From January to September, the country produced 1,570 EVs, including 1,079 cars, 126 light commercial vehicles, 13 trucks and 352 buses, with the total number annualizing to 2,100 vehicles, according to the information from local auto industry analysts Autostat.