(Yicai Global) March 18 -- Shares in Sunwoda Electronic tumbled again today after the Chinese electric car battery manufacturer set out its fourth ambitious expansion plan in seven months, and the second since the beginning of the month.

Sunwoda’s share price [SHE:300207] was trading down 3.24 percent at CNY29.24 (USD4.60) as of 12:45 p.m. China time. The stock has lost 28 percent of its value since the beginning of the year.

Sunwoda will invest CNY8 billion (USD1.26 billion) on a new 20-gigawatt-hour EV battery and energy storage battery plant in Shifang, southwestern Sichuan province, the Shenzhen-based company said yesterday. Construction should start in this year and is expected to finish in 12 months, it added.

Sunwoda will set up a project company responsible for the investment, construction and operation of the new plant. The unit will rent a factory of around 250,000 square meters as well as ancillary facilities from the local government that it will use as its production base, it added.

This follows plans for a CNY12 billion (USD1.9 billion) 30 GWh plant in Zhuhai, southern Guangdong province, announced on March 2. And last year, Sunwoda said in August that it is investing CNY20 billion to construct a 50 GWh plant in eastern Jiangxi province and in December it said it will also build a CNY20 billion (USD3.2 billion) 30 GWh facility in eastern Shandong province.

Sunwoda, whose main business was lithium batteries, currently operates two plants in Huizhou, Guangdong province and Nanjing, eastern Jiangsu province with a capacity of 4 GWh and 30 GWh, respectively.

The new facilities will greatly boost the company’s share of the market. The firm had 2.06 GWh of its batteries installed in vehicles last year, accounting for only 1.3 percent of the Chinese market, according to data from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance. The figure was 0.23 GWh in January, ranking eighth with a market share of 1.4 percent.

Editor: Kim Taylor