Union IT minister to visit lithium cell plant in Tirupati today

Tirupati: Minister of state for electronics and information technology (MeitY), Rajeev Chandrasekhar, will visit India's first lithium cell manufacturing facility at Tirupati on Friday. This state-of-the-art facility has been set up by the Chennai based Munoth Industries Limited with an outlay of Rs.165 crores.

The facility is located in one of the two Electronics Manufacturing Clusters set up in the temple town, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015. The installed capacity of the plant at present is 270 Mwh and can produce 20,000 cells of 10Ah capacity daily. These cells are used in power banks and this capacity is around 60 per cent of India's present requirement.

Cells for other consumer electronics like mobile phones, hearable and wearable devices will also be produced. Currently India imports complete requirements of lithium-ion cells primarily from China, South Korea, Vietnam and Hong Kong.

This plant will be a step in the direction for realising Prime Minister Modi's vision of making India the global hub of electronic manufacturing, said the minister.

Chandrasekhar will also be visiting the Dixon Technologies and United Tele links facilities located in the two EMCs.