Japan's Panasonic is considering investing in the upstream part of the battery raw materials industry in order to have better oversight of quality, pricing and supply chain responsibility, a company executive said.
The move has been led by the company's growing consumption of raw materials for batteries due to rapid growth in demand for electric vehicles (EVs), Kazunori Tanaka, general manager of the group's electronic device materials department, said."The chain is longer, so to understand and control the chain is not possible. In order to have some more control over the supply chain, Panasonic has made purchases of raw materials by itself," he said."In the future we intend to go upstream to purchase intermediates and try to get a more clear picture of the supply chain....