Morocco is negotiating with electric vehicle battery manufacturers to set up a gigafactory in the country, Reuters reported, quoting Industry Minister Ryad Mezzour.
“We hope to sign an agreement for the factory before the end of this year,” the Minister of Industry said in an interview with Reuters, without however revealing the identity of the companies concerned.
No amount has been advanced to measure the scale of the investment, the minister contented himself with qualifying the project as a “Gigafactory”, a term used for very large production units.
The planned factory for electric vehicle batteries “will provide a huge boost to the local automotive sector” and will benefit from the availability of renewable energy and raw materials such as cobalt and phosphates in the country, he added.
Demand for such batteries continues to rise inside and outside Morocco, where Citroën plans to double its production capacity within two years to 50,000 supermini electric cars, Ryad said. Mezzour.
Morocco is home to the production plants of Renault and Stellantis, with a combined production capacity of 700,000 units. “We are aiming for 1 million [units] in the next three to four years,” said Ryad Mezzour.
Last May, sales of the automotive industry in Morocco amounted to 4.13 billion dollars, up 24%.
The first and second best-selling cars in Europe, Dacia Sandero and Peugeot 208, are manufactured in Morocco.
In order to increase the competitiveness of the Moroccan automotive industry, in the face of competition from China and India, it is planned, according to the forecasts of the national strategy, to increase the rate of local integration to 80%. This is currently 65%, announced Ryad Mezzour.
