Polarium South Africa, the local subsidiary of Swedish energy storage group Polarium, plans to double the capacity of its Cape Town assembly plant by the end of this year. This was reported at a media briefing on Wednesday. The plant only started production last April and is the result of a $30-million investment in South Africa.

The Polarium group has a policy of placing its plants in strategically chosen locations in its various market regions, to minimize transport costs and to minimize carbon emissions. Apart from Sweden and South Africa, it also has plants in Mexico and Vietnam. The South African plant has already assembled some 15 000 lithium-ion batteries, for energy storage applications across Africa.

“Africa is a huge market for us,” affirmed Polarium South Africa CEO Etienne Gerber. “We’ve done significant business in Africa.”

Until now, the local company has focused on supplying telecommunications companies, largely outside South Africa, with batteries to provide continuous power to their installations, such as cellphone towers. But energy storage has become a big issue in South Africa, owing to scheduled rotating nationwide power cuts, called loadshedding, imposed by the national electricity utility, Eskom. Consequently, the company is planning to diversify into the industrial and commercial sectors in South Africa, where businesses needs energy storage systems to complement the solar energy systems they are installing, to reduce or eliminate the impact on their operations caused by loadshedding.

The Cape Town plant assembles nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) technology lithium-ion batteries. The South African market is currently dominated by lithium-ion-phosphate batteries, but NMC batteries have twice the cycle life of these, and are also easier to recycle. Currently, the South African facility’s biggest selling product is a 12.6 kW/h battery, but clients install these in stacks, ranging from two units to ten units each.

Polarium South Africa is ISO 9001, ISO 14 001 and ISO 45 001 certified. “We are probably the most certified battery manufacturer in South Africa,” he observed.

The company is also seeking to reduce its dependence on imported inputs for its batteries. From the very start of its activities in South Africa, it has been seeking to develop a local supply chain. As a result, a number of components are now being manufactured in South Africa. One of the company’s local suppliers is now also exporting components to the group’s plants in Mexico and Vietnam.

But lithium-ion battery cells are not manufactured in South Africa. The group sources its battery cells from China, and especially South Korea, and hopes to secure a European supplier as well. Having a diversity of supply is important for the company.

The group, as a whole, has a target of becoming carbon-emissions-neutral by 2030. The Cape Town plant will be the group’s pioneer in this regard, installing its own solar power array and in-house technology battery storage system, which will also make it independent of the Eskom grid.