Gotion shareholders approve €3.22 billion PowerCo joint ventures in Spain, Slovakia and Morocco

Shareholders approved the deals on 20 October, and Gotion disclosed the vote in its third-quarter report on 29 October. Gotion and its subsidiaries will contribute about €1.60 billion; PowerCo, Volkswagen's battery unit, will invest about €1.62 billion.

The report puts the largest project at the Valencia cell plant near Sagunto in Spain, with 29.1 GWh of annual capacity and planned investment of €2.26 billion. PowerCo keeps a 51% controlling stake there, with Gotion holding 49%. The factory is one Volkswagen is already building; it will be transferred into the joint venture and developed into a European hub for its LFP Unified Cell platform. Gotion's wholly owned Gotion Spain Green Energy unit will sign two engineering, procurement and construction contracts with PowerCo Spain worth €295 million and €799 million, and shareholders approved the combined €1.094 billion on the same day.

In Šurany, Slovakia, the partners plan an 8.4 GWh cell plant costing about €480 million, with Gotion on 51%. The Kenitra venture will build 100,000 tonnes a year of LFP cathode active material for around €480 million, again with Gotion on 51% and PowerCo on 49%, with output intended mainly for the two European cell plants.

Approval does not close the transactions. The September agreement still required regulatory clearances and customary conditions, and cell purchase volumes, supply guarantees and final commercial terms remain subject to later agreements, ESS News reported.

Why the approval matters

The ventures shift Volkswagen's LFP supply chain into Europe and Morocco rather than China. Fastmarkets analyst Connor Watts said near-shoring cathode production to Morocco, which offers phosphate resources and lower costs, should help Volkswagen meet future EU rules on local sourcing. Volkswagen also agreed to sell a 5.3% stake in Gotion to Hefei Construction Investment, while remaining a strategic investor with board representation.

The Kenitra cell plant is separate and still pre-production

The cathode venture is separate from Gotion Power Morocco's cell gigafactory in Kenitra's Atlantic Free Zone. Gotion Power Morocco said on 12 October that commissioning of production equipment would begin in the week of 20 October. ESS News reported on 4 November that commercial production had not been confirmed in any reporting it reviewed.

Commissioning means bringing equipment into operation and testing its performance before output can expand. It is not a production start. Gotion Power Morocco president Khalid Qalam had said the first cell line would begin in October, a second in November, and sales of assembled batteries would follow by the end of the year.

"The startup of the equipment on October 20 is only a first step in the rollout of a unique and promising project, meant to durably structure Morocco's battery industrial ecosystem," Qalam said, according to Morocco World News.

Gotion puts first-phase capacity at 20 GWh, with investment of about MAD 13 billion, or $1.3 billion. The African Development Bank, which approved a €100 million loan on 24 July and planned to mobilise up to €141 million more, describes a first phase of 10 GWh scaling to 100 GWh. The gap between the two figures is unresolved. The Associated Press reported the same approval in dollars, at $110 million with up to $162.6 million more to be mobilised from development partners.

The bank projected more than 600 direct jobs and a 70% local industrial integration rate for its 10 GWh phase. Gotion says it has recruited more than 400 Moroccan employees so far and expects more than 2,300 direct jobs at full development. Most of the recruits trained at Gotion sites in China.

Gotion ranked fifth among global EV battery makers in the first seven months of 2026, with 34.0 GWh of installations, up 44.2% from a year earlier, Morocco World News reported. The African Development Bank calls the Kenitra site Africa's first integrated cathode-to-cell LFP battery gigafactory.