A Chinese battery maker is building something on Portugal’s Atlantic coast that goes well beyond a factory. CALB’s planned Sines gigafactory, backed by roughly €2 billion in total investment, is projected to represent more than 4% of Portugal’s national GDP once it hits full production — a figure that would make it one of the most economically consequential single foreign investments the country has ever received.
Construction is set to start this year at the facility, with Mota-Engil this week signing a €207.3 million, 22-month deal to construct the first phase of the facility. CALB, headquartered in Changzhou, China, is targeting full operations by 2028, with an initial annual capacity of 15 GWh of lithium-ion batteries aimed squarely at the European electric vehicle market. That capacity represents enough batteries to power an estimated 187,000 EV’s.
At full capacity, the plant is expected to generate 1,800 direct jobs, substantial on its own, but almost secondary to what the GDP projection implies about the facility’s total economic footprint.
From there, the company plans to expand to 45 GWh within three years and may add a third phase designed to match the scale of Tesla’s European factory.
The project’s path here wasn’t entirely smooth. In 2023, Jornal Económico reported that CALB might reconsider its commitment after Portugal moved to exclude Huawei from its 5G networks. Economy Minister Pedro Reis moved quickly to close that door, telling reporters his ministry had received no indication from CALB that the investment was at risk. Talks for the development of the facility meanwhile trace back to an MOU entered into back in 2022 between CALB and the Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade.
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