SA urged to focus on producing components for battery supply chains

South Africa can use the development and local production of various battery components in global energy storage supply chains to develop local industrial capacity, says University of the Western Cape South African Institute for Advanced Material Chemistry director Professor Vladimir Linkov. South Africa will find it difficult to compete in terms of economies of scale against the mass battery producers in the northern hemisphere. However, the country can capitalise on the growing role of energy storage systems worldwide to produce battery components where the country holds a competitive advantage, such as where it has an abundance of minerals important for battery technologies.