March 2, 2023: The European Commission has allowed Hungary to award nearly €90 million ($96 million) in state aid to expand Samsung SDI’s battery cell production facility in the country.
The Commission’s February 28 announcement follows an investigation it launched in October 2019 — which was extended in June 2021 — to assess Hungary’s original proposal to support Samsung with €108 million of aid.
The Commission has now ruled that the original proposal exceeded the minimum necessary to incentivise investment and has given the go-ahead for an €89.6 million package instead.
Without some public funding, the project would not have been carried out in Hungary or any other EU country, the Commission said.
Samsung SDI is a key player in the lithium batteries market for EVs.
In December 2017, Samsung SDI decided to invest €1.2 billion to expand the production capacity of its existing battery cells production facility for EVs in the central Hungarian region of Göd.
The plant reached full production capacity in January 2022, supplying more than 6 million battery cells per month to customers mainly in the European Economic Area and creating 1,200 new direct jobs.
Photo: Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban (2nd from left) visits the Samsung SDI plant in 2017