Basic Motors’ return to Quebec after a 20-year absence could possibly be the tipping level for the province’s nascent battery provide chain.
The automaker and its joint-venture accomplice Posco Chemical started building on a $500-million cathode energetic materials (CAM) plant in Bécancour early in March.
The location, throughout the St. Lawrence River from Trois-Rivières, is about 150 kilometres east of the place the Sainte-Thérèse Meeting plant as soon as stood on the outskirts of Montreal. That plant constructed the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, and its closure in 2002 left Quebec with out a manufacturing stake within the client car market.
François-Philippe Champagne, federal minister of innovation, science and trade, mentioned he grew up with the vehicles constructed at Sainte-Thérèse, and enthusiastically welcomed the automaker again to la belle province at a March 7 press convention.
“It’s a fantastic factor to see GM again after 20 years, however what’s extra vital for Canada and Quebec is that now, beginning off this announcement, we will probably be built-in into the worldwide provide chain for vehicles in North America.”
And if the one battery supplies plant was not sufficient, the GM facility was the second huge win for Quebec — and Bécancour — within the span of per week. Germany-based chemical agency BASF beat the automaker to the punch, asserting plans for an unrelated CAM plant within the metropolis simply three days earlier.
After months of touting its credentials as an aspiring battery-supply-chain hub, the Quebec authorities couldn’t have requested for a extra resounding endorsement.
Pierre Fitzgibbon, the province’s minister of financial system and innovation, mentioned extra is to return, with Quebec centered on all the battery provide chain, from mining and processing, to battery meeting and recycling. Given the province’s present footprint in commercial-vehicle manufacturing corresponding to buses, it’s working notably onerous on attracting cell manufacturing, Fitzgibbon added.
With the pair of CAM crops anchoring growth, and the suitable set of supportive insurance policies and geographical happenstance lending help, Quebec’s battery-supply-chain desires look more and more more likely to flip to actuality.
Electrical energy is among the many chief causes. For big industrial energy customers, Quebec is dwelling to a few of the most cost-effective energy in North America. In 2021, in keeping with Hydro-Québec, common energy prices for giant customers in Montreal, for instance, had been about half the North American common. Of the cities tallied, solely Winnipeg edged out Montreal. Cities in Ontario — Canada’s conventional industrial heartland — had been near double.
Quebec’s lengthy historical past in mining and its reserves of assets crucial to lithium-ion batteries are additionally within the province’s favour, GM Canada mentioned, including that the province’s educated workforce and its demanding and predictable environmental regime had been two different elements.
In shifting the battery provide chain from Asia, GM and different automakers are homing in on places able to producing batteries sustainably. Quebec has not been shy about selling itself accordingly, and if the flurry of exercise in Bécancour is any indication, there could possibly be far more to return.