The European Commission has approved a €209 million investment aid from Hungary for a new electric vehicle (EV) battery plant. The new plant, which will be built by South Korean company SK Innovation, will have an annual capacity of 30 gigawatt hours (GWh) and will create at least 1,900 jobs. This is the latest in a series of investments by Asian companies in the European EV market. Last year, LG Chem announced plans to invest €1.8 billion in a new EV battery plant in Poland. And last month, Chinese company CATL announced plans to invest €2 billion in a new EV battery factory in Germany.

With this investment the South Korean company, SK Innovation, has announced their plans to invest in a new electric vehicle battery plant in Hungary. This investment is said to be worth €209 million and will create over 1,000 jobs. The Hungarian government has approved the grant proposal and it is now waiting for final approval from the European Commission. Once this is given, work on the new plant can begin. This marks a big investment for electric vehicles and shows that there is growing interest in this type of technology. SK Innovation is said to be one of the largest producers of lithium-ion batteries in the world so this new plant will only serve to increase their production capacity.

The Hungarian government approved an investment of €209 million on a battery factory for electric vehicles. A subsidiary of SK Innovation, a South Korean industrial company active in energy, chemicals, logistics, services, semiconductors and information and communications technology is the company investing in Hungary. SK On Hungary’s own investment in the plant is €1,623 million. The Hungarian development ministry confirmed that this was the minimum amount necessary to boost Hungarian investments.  This project is expected to create 900 jobs at peak production and will be completed within three years time.

Also the European Commission approved a €2 billion Austrian aid scheme to help with the rollout of broadband networks. The EC State Aid is given to certain companies as support, but because of the overwhelming benefits it provides, it needs to be heavily justified.  The Hungarian investment seems like a huge figure and has been met with some opposition from national governments who are worried about their own state aids being blocked by Brussels for not meeting EU rules on subsidies for specific industries or regions.