As many as 20 firms, consisting of Reliance Industries, Ola Electric and Tata Chemicals, reportedly expressed interest in the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for manufacturing Advanced Chemistry Cell batteries, considered the latest technology in storage of electric power.
"The response to PLI ACC has been better than expected. We have notified the scheme for setting up a manufacturing capacity of 50 GWh, but the interest is more than double of that," Arun Goel, secretary, Ministry of Heavy Industries, said.
Goel declined to specify the names of the firms
that participated in the pre-bid meet held last month, although Amara Raja, Exide Leclanche Energy and Lucas TVS also reportedly participated in the pre-bid conference.
Individual companies couldn't immediately be contacted for comments.
The ministry released the Request for Proposal (RFP) document in October inviting bidders for setting up a total manufacturing capacity of 50 GWh with an outlay of Rs 18,100 crore. As many as 100 participants from 20 companies attended the pre-bid conference organized for prospective bidders.
Presentations were made on the terms and conditions, technical details of ACC manufacturing, various incentives and opportunities to promote ACC battery manufacturing in the country. The bidding will be held online through a two-stage process, under quality and cost based selection mechanism.
A senior industry executive, who did not wish to be named, said while participation was robust, there are some concerns about the localization requirement norms. "When we are looking into the details, the localization conditions appear to be too stringent. Besides, there is a penalty clause applicable every day beyond the timelines set for localization. These are posing some concerns for us."
