The Taiwanese battery maker planned to expand its existing facility in Maple Ridge, B.C., but is now shelving the plan

E-One Moli, a lithium-ion battery cell maker, will not be going ahead with its $1-billion factory expansion in Maple Ridge, B.C., the company has announced.

This month Taiwan Cement Corp., the parent company of E-On Moli, released a statement from its chairman, Nelson Chang, confirming the stoppage of construction.

In the statement Chang said it would be “very difficult” to expand its overseas plants before operating at full scale in Taiwan.

The plant expansion was first announced in November, 2023. At the time E-One Moli committed to building a $1.05-billion lithium-ion battery cell factory as an expansion to its existing Maple Ridge facility. The new factory was to provide 350 jobs and produce up to 135 million high-performance EV batteries.

The Canadian government says it is aware of the development and confirms that no promised government money ($204.5 million from the federal government and $80 million from the province) has been spent on the project.

A series of delays

E-One Moli’s decision is not out of sync with other foreign EV supply companies that pledged factories in Canada in the last two years, but paused their plans in recent months.

Beginning in mid-2024 companies including Ford, Umicore and Northvolt have made a succession of announcements about delayed timelines to their respective Canadian projects.

“The industry is facing a reality check right now,” says Alla Kolesnikova, head of data and analytics at Adamas Intelligence, in an interview with Electric Autonomy.

The majority of the delays have occurred between Ontario and Quebec, but the E-One Moli factory was western Canada’s major supply chain anchor. The company itself is also a longtime fixture in the area.

E-One Moli began operating in B.C. in the 1980s. It has had an R&D facility in Maple Ridge since the 1990s.

The company has not announced if it has a timeline for reevaluating the Maple Ridge expansion or when its Taiwanese facility would be operating at full efficiency.