OSAKA —

The Matsushita Electric Industrial Co group plans to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Osaka at a cost of more than 100 billion yen, company officials said Friday.

The facility, which will be capable of producing up to 50 million units of such batteries a month, will be one of the largest lithium-ion battery plants in the world, according to the officials. It is slated to go on stream in fiscal 2010 at the earliest, they said.

The plant will be operated by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co, which has three lithium-ion battery plants with a combined monthly output capacity of 25 million units.

After the launch of the new plant, the Matsushita group is expected to overtake Sony Corp

as the second biggest player in terms of global market share and come close behind industry leader Sanyo Electric Co.

Demand for lithium-ion batteries, used for such products as notebook personal computers, digital cameras and mobile phones, is growing sharply worldwide.

JCN

1 Comments

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  PepinGalarga at 12:50 PM JST - 19th July

  The big players are betting big on soon-to-be-obsolete technology...

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