Indonesia's Second Giant EV Battery Factory Set to Begin Operations

Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Bahlil Lahadalia has announced that the construction of an electric vehicle (EV) battery factory owned by PT Contemporary Amperex Technology Indonesia Battery (CATIB) in Karawang, West Java, is complete. According to Bahlil, the operational inauguration of the EV battery plant is now only awaiting President Prabowo Subianto’s schedule. He confirmed that all factory construction has been finished and it is ready to commence operations. “It is ready to be inaugurated. We are just waiting for the right time from the President. The factory is finished. If you want to see it, please do,” Bahlil stated when met at the Ministry of ESDM in Jakarta, quoted on Tuesday (4/8/2026). He further revealed that the battery factory operated by CATIB will be the second large-scale EV battery plant built in Indonesia. Previously, Indonesia already had a battery factory operated by PT Hyundai LG Indonesia (HLI) Green Power, also located in Karawang, West Java. The HLI Green Power EV battery plant was inaugurated for operation by Indonesia’s 7th President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) in July 2024. “So we have built two battery factories. One is LG when I was still Minister of Investment. One is CATL now that I am Minister of ESDM. This is what is called downstreaming, where we build the entire battery ecosystem in our country,” Bahlil explained. Indonesia is currently building an integrated EV battery factory ecosystem touted as the largest in the Southeast Asian region. This is supported by the country’s large reserves of the main raw material for battery components, namely nickel. The EV battery factory scheduled for operational inauguration this August is operated by PT CATIB. PT CATIB is a joint venture between Indonesia Battery Corporation (IBC) and CBL, a subsidiary of China’s largest battery producer, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL). IBC President Director Aditya Farhan Arif previously stated that the first phase production capacity of the EV battery factory reaches 6.9 Giga Watt hours (GWh). The construction of the facility is still on schedule, with operations targeted to commence by the end of July 2026. “The first capacity we will install is 6.9 GWh and God willing, it is still on schedule. So, July 2026, the end of July 2026. Currently, the progress is already 90%, so we are quite optimistic that we will still be able to achieve the target,” Aditya told CNBC Indonesia on Tuesday (23/6/2026). Aditya explained that when commercial operations begin, the factory will not have difficulty finding a market because buyers are already secured. He noted that the EV battery industry concept is built based on existing demand so that production can commence immediately. “So in principle, the buyers are already ready, so when it is ready for commercial operation, we will immediately produce commercially. In fact, trial production is already underway at the PT CATIB factory,” he said. He further explained that the nickel value chain from the mining sector to becoming a battery involves a fairly long process. The stages start from mining activities, followed by initial processing, then battery material production, and finally battery production. PT CATIB itself, he said, is at the most downstream position in that value chain. According to him, the existence of PT CATIB is a very important part of the entire integrated nickel industry ecosystem. “CATIB’s capacity in this first phase is 6.9 GWh and we will soon expand it to at least 15 GWh. If we convert 15 GWh into electric vehicles, it is roughly equivalent to about 250,000 electric vehicles,” he said. The integrated EV battery project operated by PT CATIB in Karawang only began construction in June 2025. President Prabowo Subianto officiated the groundbreaking ceremony for the EV battery ecosystem project in Karawang, West Java, on Sunday, 29 June 2025. The project is a joint venture owned by a consortium of PT Aneka Tambang (Antam), PT Indonesia Battery Corporation (IBC), and Chinese company Ningbo Contemporary Brunp Lygend Co. Ltd. (CBL), a joint venture of CATL, Brunp and Lygend. Located in Artha Industrial Hill (AIH) and Karawang New Industry City (KNIC), West Java, Prabowo symbolically inaugurated the groundbreaking for the upstream-to-downstream battery project. With the factory set to be inaugurated for operation this August, the construction process took only about 13 months. The total initial investment for the entire integrated upstream-to-downstream battery project reached US5.9billion, equivalenttoRp96.04trillion(assuminganexchangerateofRp16, 278perUS). The project consists of a total of six joint ventures (JVs) from upstream to downstream. JV one to three constitute the upstream battery ecosystem, while JV four to six are the downstream battery ecosystem. The upstream JVs include a nickel mining project by PT Sumberdaya Arindo (SDA) with a production capacity of 7.8 million wet metric tonnes of saprolite and 6 million wet metric tonnes of limonite, and a Rotary Kiln Electric Furnace (RKEF) nickel smelter project by PT Feni Haltim (FHT) with a capacity of 88,000 tonnes of refined nickel alloy per year, targeted to begin production in 2027.