Gigafactories: a journey across Italy and Germany to discover where the mega-plants for producing batteries destined for electric cars will be built. Among the sites, the former Olivetti facility in Scarmagno.
The future of electric vehicles also runs through the so-called "gigafactories" — that is, mega-plants where batteries are produced in enormous quantities, meeting the growing demand from electric car manufacturers, who in some cases decide to produce them in-house.
That is the case, for example, of Volkswagen, which recently announced its intention to reduce production costs and increase the range of its cars by opening six gigafactories by 2030. The plants will have a combined production capacity of 240 GWh, and it is now almost certain that the Salzgitter facility, in Lower Saxony, will play a strategic role, producing batteries for the most widely sold electric models from 2025 onwards and recycling spent ones.
The other factory set to come into operation from 2023 is the one in Skellefteå, Sweden, operational from 2023 with a production capacity of up to 40 GWh: Volkswagen has already reached an agreement with Northvolt, a specialised company in the sector, which has agreed to sell its stake so that the plant can be managed by the German giant alone. It is not yet clear where the other facilities will open: one could open in Spain, in collaboration with the Madrid regional government and energy company Iberdrola, with which Volkswagen has struck another agreement precisely to advance its new production strategy. Portugal and France are also being mentioned, and for Eastern Europe, the Czech Republic or Slovakia. The overarching goal is therefore to reduce costs as much as possible and maximise profits, forging strategic alliances and producing the necessary batteries "in house" to allow the brand to push ahead ever more decisively and aggressively on the electric road.
But gigafactories are not only emerging within car brands — they are also taking shape as standalone ventures. That is the case, for example, of Italvolt, the entirely Italian project that in recent weeks has dominated the conversation not only from an "energy" perspective, but also an economic one: the goal is to make Italy a future "battery valley" by inaugurating a site that on paper appears to have enormous potential. In Scarmagno, in the province of Turin, Italy's first gigafactory — and the largest in Europe — for lithium batteries is set to be built.
The chosen area is the former Olivetti site, an industrial complex measuring around one million square metres, selected by Italvolt to develop the new mega-company. The plan is ambitious, but strongly championed by Italvolt's CEO, Lars Carlstrom, an entrepreneur who has been active in the automotive sector for years and has announced his intention to finance part of the investment from his own pocket — around 5 million euros to start — and to forge strategic partnerships to cover the remainder of the required sum: around 40 million euros to begin, and 4 billion in total to start production in 2024.
Last March, Italvolt announced that it had drawn up a memorandum of understanding with American Manganese Inc. — holder of a patent on lithium-ion battery cathode recycling (RecycLiCo) — with the aim of developing a recycling plant alongside the Scarmagno gigafactory.
The plant, Italvolt explains, will be dedicated to the production and storage of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. The former Olivetti site in Scarmagno, owned by the Fondo Monteverdi managed by Prelios Sgr, was selected by Italvolt for its particularly favourable technical characteristics and geographical location.
The site had in fact already been chosen in the Olivetti era by architects Marco Zanuso and Eduardo Vittoria precisely for the ease of its road, motorway and rail connections, both with Ivrea and with the city of Turin, and reflects the industrial vocation of Piedmont, an Italian centre of excellence in the automotive sector.
The Piedmontese factory will initially span 300,000 square metres, and will have an initial production capacity of 45 gigawatts, with a potential of up to 70 GWh. It will be designed by the architecture division of Pininfarina, which recently celebrated its 90th anniversary and intends to design a next-generation industrial plant. Comau, a leader in industrial automation, will be the supplier of innovative solutions, plants and technologies, and will build the research and development laboratory that will host academics and industrial partners engaged in developing the most cutting-edge technologies in the electric mobility sector.
The goal, as mentioned, is to become a reference point in battery production at a European level, responding to the growing demand from the automotive world. According to estimates, global demand is set to increase 17-fold to around 3,600 gigawatts (GWh) by 2030.
If the gigafactory project comes to fruition, the knock-on effects on Piedmont's economic and industrial fabric will be enormous: the initial estimate envisages the employment of 4,000 workers, with a supply chain that could overall create up to 15,000 new jobs.
The timeline for becoming operational, however, remains uncertain as of today. In February, Lars Carlstrom announced that he held a purchase option on the former Olivetti facilities, and the intention to "exercise it in order to begin production in 2024." The entrepreneur had also clarified that he had launched the environmental and feasibility study, but the 4 billion euros needed to get the project off the ground still need to be secured.
Carlstrom for his part has announced an initial investment of 30–40 million euros, but the project will need to be "made attractive to present to banks and to the Government," Carlstrom himself stated. Finally, the question of permits remains to be resolved. To begin construction, the single act issued by the Sportello unico per le attività produttive of Ivrea is required, and to obtain it, approval of a structural amendment to Scarmagno municipality's Piano regolatore will be necessary — a process that is still under study.