Seat presses go on Spanish battery packing plant

Spain's Seat will begin building a battery assembly plant just west of Barcelona in the coming weeks, after confirming an additional €300mn investment as part of the country's strategic project for economic recovery and transformation program for the electric and connected vehicle (Perte Vec) public-private partnership.          

The investment, promising more than 400 new jobs, is an addendum to Seat's 'Future: Fast Forward' project, which promises €10bn to electrify the firm's Spanish automaking value chain, all the way from extracting lithium from local mines — through a gigafactory in Sagunto, also close to Valencia, operated by VW battery-making subsidiary Powerco — to making EVs at Martorell and at another plant in Pamplona.