There are suppliers of the Chinese CALB "considering investing in Portugal", guarantees the Minister of Economy

Economy Minister Pedro Reis confirmed this Monday that the Chinese company CALB's project to build a lithium battery factory in Sines will have the support of European funds, but did not reveal the final value of these incentives.

The minister hosted the mega official launch event for the construction of the gigafactory on 92 hectares of land in the Sines Industrial and Logistics Zone (ZILS), which took place at the Técnico Innovation Center in Lisbon and was attended by CALB's chairwoman, Liu Jingyu. According to the minister, CALB brought several of its global suppliers to the event, "who are also interested in investing in Portugal.

"We are in a highly competitive race for foreign investment. Today, the international chairwoman of CALB told me that there are suppliers of the company here in this room who are developing products and solutions there, and who are considering investing in Portugal," said the minister, without revealing the names of the suppliers. "To say more than that would be to give our international competition an advantage."

Regarding the incentives, Pedro Reis explained that "this investment falls within the European incentive scheme for reindustrialisation and the acceleration of innovation and new technical skills, which allows support of up to 35%. That is why support of 350 million has been indicated, but that does not mean that we will get there", revealing that the Chinese company's investment project has just been submitted to AICEP precisely to have access to financial and tax incentives. "Now this investment will still be assessed, what is eligible, and we will award the incentives that we are allowed to anchor to this unit", he said. The assessment will still take a few months, confirmed the AICEP representative, but he confirmed that "the contracting must take place in 2025".

"These incentive allocation contracts take some time, because we have to study and discuss everything that is eligible and what is not eligible, the representations of support, the intensities of support, and only then can we have a finished negotiation proposal, which can be contracted", he added.