Contemporary Amperex Technology and Gotion High-Tech have denied that the United States has pressed charges against the Chinese battery manufacturers over forced labor.

The accusations about CATL having connections to forced labor are groundless and completely false, the Ningde-based company said in a statement on June 7. Gotion has always respected human rights and protected the rights of employees, the firm said, adding that the accusations are groundless and terribly wrong.

A group of US Republican lawmakers said in two letters to the Department of Homeland Security that CATL and Gotion High-Tech should be immediately added to the US import ban list under the so-called Uygur Forced Labor Prevention Act because the two companies’ supply chains use “slave labor,” The Wall Street Journal reported on June 6.

Of the suppliers mentioned in the letters, some have never had any relations with CATL, some terminated cooperation with CATL long ago, and others work with CATL through subsidiaries, but without connection to forced labor or violations of US laws and regulations, the firm noted.

Gotion High-Tech’s selection of partners is based on a rigorous audit mechanism and evaluation standards, the Anhui province-based company pointed out.

CATL ranked first in the world for seven consecutive years, according to South Korean battery and energy research firm SNE Research. Last year, the company’s electric vehicle battery consumption volume soared 40.8 percent to 259.7 gigawatt-hours from a year earlier, achieving a market share of 36.8 percent.

Moreover, CATL ranked first worldwide in the field of energy storage batteries for the third year in a row, with a global market share of 40 percent, SNE Research data also showed.

Gotion High-Tech was the world’s eighth-largest company by power battery installed capacity last year, with a total of 17.1 gigawatt-hours, accounting for 2.4 percent of the global market, according to SNE Research.

In February last year, CATL and Ford Motor announced they would jointly invest USD3.5 billion to build a battery plant using CATL’s technologies, with production expected to start in 2026.

Most CATL products exported to the US are energy storage batteries. But according to a report published at the end of last year, US electric power firm Duke Energy will gradually stop using CATL’s energy storage batteries under pressure from the US Congress.

Gotion High-Tech’s subsidiary in the US said in September last year that it would build a battery plant with an annual capacity of 40 GWh in Illinois. The first battery pack production line of the company’s plant in Fremont went into operation last December.

（Picture: Veer）