Specialist battery company Sunlight, a member of Olympia Group, will significantly increase manufacturing capacity and create new jobs at its state-of-the-art plant in Xanthi, northern Greece, following a €25 million, 10-year loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) which was confirmed earlier in Athens yesterday.
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EIB’s financing will support an innovative investment project to increase the production capacity for lithium batteries, expand Research and Development capabilities, as well as allow the company to produce vital components which are currently outsourced.
The project is expected to create 205 new skilled jobs in Xanthi, a less developed region of the EU in terms of per-capita-GDP, highlighting the EIB’s commitment to equitable growth and regional cohesion.
This is a second round of EIB support for Sunlight, the first, a €12.5 million loan, was agreed in 2018.
The operation is part of the EIB’s dedicated package of support to REPowerEU and the Green Deal Industrial Plan for the Net-Zero Age, which are designed to accelerate the energy transition and help expand Europe’s state-of-the-art manufacturing capacity in strategic technologies required for the decarbonization of the economy.
Sunlight is currently the third largest manufacturer of batteries in the global motive power battery industry, with about €1 billion of consolidated annual sales and a workforce of approximately 3,100 people.
The company, a leading innovator in its field, is in the process of transforming itself from a mainly lead-acid battery manufacturer, supplying batteries in the secondary market, to a provider of energy storage applications and direct supplier of batteries to Original Equipment Manufacturers (“OEMsâ€) for industrial forklifts.
The support from the EIB will among other things safeguard existing jobs and create new employment, in the area, as well as help to expand production at Sunlight’s Xanthi site.
The project will support the development of a pilot line to produce prototype lithium cells, and contribute to financing the company’s research, development and innovation (RDI) activities related to battery development and production. ■