ABC, an ubiquitous brand in Indonesian households, is known for selling chilli sauce, ketchup, syrups, snacks, and single-use batteries. Who would’ve thought that the seven-decade-old company would one day become the country’s first manufacturer of electric-vehicle (EV) batteries.
In 2019, the 80-year-old conglomerate began constructing an EV battery factory with a capacity of 107 megawatt-hour (MWh) per year for battery cells and 54 MWh per year for battery packs.
In March 2022, it began mass production. ABC now sells batteries to local EV makers, mostly two-wheelers, such as Volta and Viar. In the next two years, ABC plans to increase its battery-cell battery-cell Battery cell A battery cell is the basic electrochemical unit that provides a source of electrical energy by direct conversion of chemical energy, as part of a battery pack capacity to 2 gigawatt-hour (GWh), and battery-pack battery-pack Battery pack A battery pack is a collection of battery cells, arranged in one or more enclosures and electrically connected to form one or more energy storage devices. capacity to 120MWh.
ABC’s revenue from EV battery sales is already on par with revenue from its flagship, single-use batteries, according to Asep Sarif Hidayat, the director of Lithium Marketing at ABC. Demand is growing on the back of new government subsidies for EVs, Hidayat told The Ken.
Some might see the company’s leap into the EV era as a success story for the Indonesian government and its plans to turn the country into an EV-battery hub. But that would be getting it all wrong.
ABC’s EV batteries use a mix of Lithium, Iron, and Phosphates (LFP). On the other hand, Indonesia’s national roadmap for EV battery development hinges on nickel.
Indonesia holds the largest largest International Nickel Study Group World Nickel Factbook 2021 Read more nickel reserves in the world. With this advantage, it wanted to emerge as a serious global player in the EV industry. NMC batteries, which currently make up the majority of EV battery sales, can contain up to 80% nickel.
In January 2020, the government went so far as to ban ban The Jakarta Post Indonesia to ban nickel exports from January 2020 Read more the export of nickel ore, forcing companies who wanted access to Indonesia’s nickel to invest in processing the mineral into higher-value products within its borders. According to the government’s downstream map map Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ministry of Industry Roadmap for downstreaming Indonesia's mineral resources: Nickel Read more for nickel, producing battery cells with nickel can increase its value up to 67 times.
