Chinese Dongjin Group to Invest $15 Million in Dry-Battery Manufacturing Plant near Faisalabad

Chinese manufacturer Dongjin Group has signed an agreement to set up a $15 million dry-battery manufacturing facility at Allama Iqbal Industrial City near Faisalabad, in a move that targets the fast-rising domestic demand from electric two-wheelers, solar storage systems, and conventional consumer electronics. The investment was finalised with provincial authorities under Punjab's industrial-investment framework and falls within the second-wave CPEC industrial-relocation push.

For a country importing the overwhelming majority of its consumer and industrial battery cells, the announcement is structurally important — not for the dollar size of the headline number, but for what it signals about the localisation of the storage supply chain that Pakistan's solar rollout now depends on.

Why Faisalabad, and why dry batteries

Allama Iqbal Industrial City is the largest of Punjab's planned industrial estates, designed specifically to host Chinese relocation under CPEC Phase 2. Dongjin's proposed plant focuses on dry-cell battery production — primary cells used in remote controls, clocks, torches, and lower-end consumer goods, plus the small rechargeable cells that go into power banks and bike-mounted lights. The investment does not include lithium-ion or solar-storage cell manufacturing, which sit at the higher end of the value chain and require different process engineering.

The supply-chain logic

• Demand side: domestic dry-cell consumption has grown roughly in line with the electric two-wheeler boom and the spread of LED torches and emergency lighting during load-shedding peaks.
• Cost arbitrage: imported dry cells now carry duty, freight, and currency risk. Local assembly with imported electrode materials cuts the landed cost by a measurable margin.
• Skill transfer: dry-cell manufacturing is an entry-level battery technology — a deliberate first step before more complex lithium-ion or sodium-ion lines move in.

How this fits Pakistan's broader storage trajectory

Pakistan's solar boom has created a parallel demand surge for battery storage — initially lead-acid for entry-level inverter back-up, increasingly lithium-ion for higher-end hybrid solar systems. Dongjin's facility does not address that lithium gap directly, but it establishes a manufacturing toe-hold in a CPEC industrial estate that is structurally designed to host follow-on Chinese investors. Once one Chinese battery producer is operating successfully, the path is materially shorter for a lithium-cell follow-up.