Reliance raised its battery gigafactory target to 120 GWh, anchored by a $3 billion Samsung ammonia deal

Reliance Industries has raised its battery manufacturing target from 100 GWh to 120 GWh a year. That is roughly the annual output of a large European gigafactory, scaled fourfold before the first cell has shipped. And it is only one line in a plan that couples the battery plant to solar, hydrogen and ammonia production inside a single 5,000-acre campus in Gujarat.

Why the target jumped to 120 GWh

Reliance scaled its storage target from 100 GWh to 120 GWh at the June annual meeting, a demand-responsive revision rather than a fixed endpoint. The first phase is 40 GWh of cell and battery-pack output, ramping through the second half of 2026. All major equipment has already reached the Jamnagar site, so the gate ahead is commissioning, not procurement.

Phase one alone would make it a meaningful player in grid-scale lithium iron phosphate (LFP) storage. Utility buyers prize the chemistry for thermal stability and long cycle life. The campus also hosts solar-module, electrolyser and fuel-cell lines inside the same Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex.

How the plant scales against peers

For decades the battery market's ceiling was measured in tens of gigawatt-hours. Reliance announces 120 GWh, putting it in the same sentence as the giants. CATL operates beyond 600 GWh, BYD near 300, LG Energy above 200. A planned 120 GWh unit would rank behind the Chinese and Korean leaders but far ahead of Europe's challengers.

No large Western producer runs near 120 GWh today. Northvolt planned big and collapsed. Europe's battery map is littered with factories that never reached volume. A single Indian company now plans more capacity than the entire European challenger base combined. What matters is not the announcement but the delivered megawatt-hours.

The ammonia deal that anchors demand

The green ammonia agreement with Samsung C&T in March covers 15 years of supply starting in the second half of fiscal 2029, valued above $3 billion. That is one of the bigger renewable ammonia offtakes signed so far, and it arrived before the hydrogen lines that will feed it. The order of events is old practice: a buyer signature precedes a plant.

We are proud to partner with Samsung C&T to supply green ammonia that is cost-competitive and reliable.

— Shri Anant Ambani, Executive Director, Reliance Industries

In the short term, the campus serves as captive storage for Reliance's own solar assets in Kutch. In the long term the ammonia is the export line, and Samsung gives it a signed floor at a time most hydrogen projects have no offtaker at all. As we wrote in August about the FID at Sheep Creek, a signed offtake is the line that separates a plan from a project.

Where the plan can break

The exposed parts are upstream. India has no battery-grade lithium refinery operating at full scale inside its borders, so the metal rides on foreign chains. And a 2026 attempt to license cell technology from China's Xiamen Hithium was reported paused. Both gaps sit inside a programme that claims self-reliance as its central argument. The distance between the claim and the mineral is the number to watch.

Reliance frames the stack as a cost weapon. Batteries feed its own solar, the metal curves into its own electrolysers, and carbon chemistries run against captive demand. A single balance sheet that makes power, stores it, and converts the surplus into an export product with a buyer already attached. The logic is coherent on paper. The verification is the commissioning window in the second half of 2026.

Get that wrong and the promised 120 GWh stays a roadmap. Get it right and Jamnagar starts to look less like a factory and more like a component that the grid economy can price. The marker in both cases is the same number: 40 GWh going live later this year.

What the 120 GWh build depends on

For the target to hold, it needs three things to line up. A cell partner to close the licensing gap. A lithium supply line, either its own refinery or a firm offtake agreement, to disconnect the metal door. And a buyer for the battery output beyond its own solar project, since captive demand alone will not absorb phase one's volume.

Development scenarios

The economics of scaling at Jamnagar

Gigafactories live and die on two numbers: the cost per gigawatt-hour of capacity and the time to fill the order book. Reliance has the second advantage already signed. The Samsung ammonia deal and its own Kutch solar queue give the campus internal demand across storage and hydrogen, so the first phase does not have to chase the spot market. That is a real edge over a pure merchant plant.

The first number is the open question. Battery-grade lithium feedstock still has to be imported, and equipment cost for a full integrated line sits well above commodity LFP packs from China, so the economics lean on the captive market to close the gap. The vertical model means the factory sells into its own fleet at cost, which the signed offtake makes bearable.

Neither advantage is permanent. Price curves move, and the mineral stack stays exposed. The correct reading: it has bought itself time and a signed anchor. Now it has to prove its cost stays inside the payback window.

The verdict path

Follow the commissioning date, not the press release. That date is the number that revalues everything around it. A plant that signs the ammonia book first and proves it later is the one worth watching from the day the cable goes live.

Read the 120 GWh the same way you would read any figure of this scale. The ambition is real, the mineral dependency is real, and between the two sits a single gate in the second half of 2026. That is where the thesis either pays or does not.

Sources