Volta Energy Solutions, a subsidiary of South Korean-based Solus Advanced Materials, plans to be manufacturing copper foil components soon for electric vehicle batteries at a plant in Granby, Quebec.
Government officials, including Quebec Premier Francois Legault and federal environment minister Steven Guilbeault, attended a ceremony on Tuesday to announce the factory along with company representatives in Granby, a city of about 66,000 residents that is one hour southeast of Montreal.
Quebec has been fiercely courting manufacturers of electric vehicle battery components in competition with the rest of Canada and the United States. Both countries have unveiled generous financial programs to lure the same industrial facilities for electric vehicle production. German automaker Volkswagen announced plans to open a plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, which is expected to be the largest manufacturing plant in Canada when it opens in 2027 after receiving up to CA$13.2 billion from government funds.
Volta Energy Solutions' plant in Quebec is expected to receive CA$ 150 million from the province. The CA$ 750 million plant is expected to create 260 jobs. Canada's federal lobbyist registry notes that Solus and Volta have met with federal government officials in relation to their Canadian operations as recently as last month.
Copper foil is used in lithium-ion batteries as a pathway for the electric current and a heat source. It is made by employing a technology that stretches copper thinly.
The Quebec operation will occupy an existing copper foil factory at 654 Bernard Ave. that was built two decades ago. Solus Advanced Materials, which was known as Doosan Solus until 2020, purchased the property for CA $81 million in 2022, according to Montreal's La Presse newspaper.
Volta's new copper foil plant joins several other recently created battery component manufacturing undertakings in the province of Quebec. They include a pit in northern Quebec that mines lithium for Tesla batteries, several battery-related production facilities in the Becancour industrial park and a proposed Northvolt battery facility in Saint Basile le Grand.
Volta's facility will go into mass production in 2026 and will initially produce 25,000 tons of copper foil annually, and that total should rise to 63,000 per year after phase two is completed, according to the company's press release.
Solus plans to expand the plant to allow for a 34% increase in output, according to the company's most recent earnings report. The plant is the company's third copper foil plant, joining others in Hungary and Luxembourg.
The production facility is located in the Granby industrial park, a 70 million-square-foot property that has received CA$1.5 billion in investments over the last 15 years, according to its website.
The plant produced copper foil for circuit boards when it opened in 2000 after CA $130 million in investments. The facility was expected to generate 140 jobs and was 49% owned by Quebec government agencies and 51% owned by Circuit Foil Luxembourg, which was owned by Arbed, now part of ArcelorMittal, the world's second-largest steel manufacturer. The plant closed with 67 layoffs in 2005 due to lagging global demand and competition from Asia. In more recent times, it was used by a local cardboard manufacturer as a warehouse.