Granby will join the ranks of the Quebec battery industry on Tuesday with the formalization of the Volta Canada Energy Solutions plant project, was able to confirm The Press. Quebec and Ottawa will provide financial support to a business established in Luxembourg – a country known for its advantageous tax treatment for businesses.
Posted at 12:44 a.m. Updated at 6:00 a.m.
It had not been possible to obtain the details of this financial package estimated at several hundred million dollars. These details will be revealed by Premier François Legault, Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy, Pierre Fitzgibbon, and Federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François- Philippe Champagne, at a press conference.
In Granby, Volta Canada Energy Solutions will produce copper sheets. These enter into the manufacture of the anode, the negative pole of the lithium-ion battery found in electric cars. The company is owned by Volta Energy Solutions, domiciled in Luxembourg, according to the Registraire des entreprises du Québec.
Signals
This project is not a surprise in itself.
Since March 31, 2022, Solus Advanced Materials, a South Korean group to which Volta belongs, has owned the former Circuit Foil Luxembourg factory. The multinational had spent 81 million to get their hands on the land and the building, located in the industrial park of Granby, whose floor area is 90,000 square feet.
Last May, as part of an economic mission to Asia, Mr. Champagne notably met with the senior management of Solus in South Korea. On X (formerly Twitter), he implied that the establishment of the group in Canada was only a formality.
“We discussed how we can continue to develop this market [le Canada] together, because Canada is a reliable, stable and secure partner,” said the Minister, in the message that accompanied a photo showing him with the senior management of Solus.
Mr. Fitzgibbon also mentioned the copper sheet project in Granby last year during an editorial meeting with The Press. At the time, the minister suggested that the project could represent a total investment of between 200 and 300 million. According to financial documents from the promoters, there are at least two production sites. Volta therefore seems to be counting on an expansion of the existing industrial footprint in Granby.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of Economy, Innovation and Energy
Operation ceased in 2005 at Circuit Foil Luxembourg. Limited activities had remained until 2014. The Quebec State had injected 104 million into the adventure between 1999 and 2003. The factory produced copper sheets for the printed circuit board market.
Several announcements
Volta Canada will be the most recent company to obtain financial support as part of a project surrounding the sector of batteries for electric vehicles. On August 17, Ford had received a total of 640 million in aid from the Legault and Trudeau governments to build a cathode materials plant – the main element of the lithium-ion battery – in Bécancour.
By October, Northvolt should lift the veil on an investment of 7 billion for a cell complex, the last stage before the assembly of the batteries, on the South Shore of Montreal. The Press has already revealed the details of what will be the largest private industrial project in Quebec.
Luxembourg is one of the countries that are often blamed for the tax climate that allows large companies to reduce their tax bill. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified from 2002 around twenty “offshore financial centres”. Among them were Switzerland, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The IMF stopped publishing this list in 2008.
Since 2000, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified around twenty “uncooperative tax havens”. In 2023, no administration is officially identified by the OECD as an “uncooperative tax haven”.
