On August 3, Acer Group announced that in order to expand its foothold in the energy storage industry, the company's board of directors approved the acquisition of Changli Technology, a lithium iron phosphate battery company, for about 11 million shares at a price of NT$30 per share and no more than 13 million shares.
Founded in 1976 in Taiwan, Acer Group was originally a manufacturer of magnetic materials and later gradually transformed into a computer manufacturer. In 1987, Acer launched the world's first portable notebook computer and became one of the pioneers in the global notebook computer market. Until 2009, it became the top two PC manufacturers in the world. It currently owns Acer, Gateway, Packard Bell, emachines, Founder and other brands.
Regarding the acquisition of Changli Technology's equity, Chen Junsheng, chairman of Acer, said: "Under the sustainable strategy of the group's development, Acer has begun to deploy household energy storage and energy storage projects in recent years. Long-term strategic investment, deepening the upstream and downstream layout of the energy storage industry, providing complete solutions from manufacturing to application, before and after the meter, and also contributing to the green energy industry.”
According to the data, Changli Technology was established in 2009, and its main products are related products of lithium iron phosphate batteries. It obtained the qualification as a battery cell supplier for industrial and commercial energy storage systems in March 2020 and officially entered the energy storage market. Since then, the development of energy storage products has entered the "fast lane".
In May 2021, Changli Technology completed the design architecture of the first-generation energy storage cabinet battery system; in March 2022, it completed the design of the second-generation energy storage battery system.
In January 2023, Changli Technology completed the installation of a 20-foot standard 1MW energy storage system in its factory area; in March, Changli Technology joined hands with Siemens and Power Industry to release energy storage system products. This energy storage system uses Lithium Iron Phosphate cells produced by Changli Technology, together with PCS from Siemens and EMS from Power Industries.
Up to now, Changli Technology has a variety of large-scale energy storage systems of different specifications, as well as industrial, commercial and household energy storage system products.
When it comes to betting on lithium iron phosphate batteries, we have to mention another well-known Taiwanese company, Foxconn. It's just that compared to Acer's bet on the energy storage track, Foxconn is on the electric vehicle track.
In March of this year, Foxconn CEO and chairman Liu Yangwei announced that Foxconn will produce batteries and battery packs for energy storage systems in Wisconsin, USA, and battery packs for complete vehicles in Ohio.
On April 9, Foxconn announced plans to invest NT$25 billion in the next three years to build a new manufacturing facility in Kaohsiung, a city in southern Taiwan, China, to further support its electric vehicle goals. Foxconn said its investment in Kaohsiung will include factories to produce electric buses and power batteries.
Liu Yangwei said that Kaohsiung will become an important base for Foxconn to deploy electric vehicles around the world. To this end, Foxconn will continue to invest in the three major industries of software, electric vehicles, batteries and batteries.
Specifically, Kaohsiung is the R&D center of Foxconn's electric bus platform. Foxconn started construction of the electric bus factory in Qiaotou Science Park this year. Mass production is expected in 2025. The initial planned annual output is 500 vehicles. It is expected to expand to 1,000 vehicles in 2028 depending on the situation.
In terms of batteries, Foxconn plans to focus on lithium iron phosphate vehicle batteries in the Kaohsiung Hefa Industrial Park, which is expected to mass produce 1.2 GWh in the third quarter of 2024; Qiaotou Science Park is expected to start construction in 2024, and the mass production scale will reach 3.0 GWh by the end of 2025.
