Powering Canada’s EV Future: SCADA and Controls for a $1.7B Battery Separator Plant
How CSI is delivering the complete SCADA and controls infrastructure for Canada’s first lithium-ion battery separator manufacturing facility — engineering, building, and commissioning control panels and software across three basefilm lines, four coating trains, utilities, and plant-wide networking.
Industry
Process
Service
Full System Design & Integration
Platform
Siemens PLC / SCADA
Scale
$1.7B green field facility
A joint venture between a global materials manufacturer and a major automotive OEM is building Canada’s first large-scale lithium-ion battery separator plant in Ontario. The facility — a $1.7 billion green field investment — will produce enough separator material to support approximately one million electric vehicles per year when fully operational. The plant requires a complete SCADA and controls infrastructure spanning the entire plant and outdoor utilities, as well as a plant-wide industrial OT network — all designed, built, factory-tested, and commissioned to meet demanding production timelines and safety standards for chemical processing.
CSI is delivering the entire controls and SCADA scope for the facility — from electrical engineering and shop drawings through panel fabrication, software development, factory acceptance testing, and on-site commissioning. The scope covers more than 70 control panels across every production area of the plant, and hundreds of decentralized field IO modules and PROFINET instruments.
The controls architecture is built on Siemens S7-1500 PLCs and Ignition SCADA system with decentralized Ignition Edge Panels for local operation. Each PLC system is designed with a fault tolerant media redundancy ring with a combination of Siemens decentralized IO modules Compact Field Units (CFU) and ET200eco PN modules, as well as Endress&Hauser Flow Meters. The plant-wide industrial OT network architecture is designed with Siemens SCALANCE technology and hardware.
CSI is producing all electrical drawings in EPLAN, sourcing and assembling all panel hardware, and developing the complete software package for every area — with each system going through a rigorous factory acceptance test at CSI’s facility before delivery to site.
The project follows a phased delivery schedule aligned with the construction timeline, with panel fabrication, software engineering, and commissioning rolling out area by area. Every area goes through the same rigorous process: shop drawing development and approval, panel fabrication and hardware FAT, software engineering and software FAT, delivery to site, and on-site commissioning — which includes owner training and approved operation and maintenance documentation.
CSI’s team is handling every stage in-house — electrical design, EPLAN drafting, panel build, PLC and SCADA programming, and on-site commissioning — with deliveries scheduled across 2025 through 2027 to support the plant’s target commercial production date.
The project is currently on track to be delivered on schedule and on budget, with final commissioning stages expected to begin in 2027. It represents one of the largest single controls contracts in CSI’s history, positioning the company at the heart of Canada’s emerging EV battery supply chain — delivering the automation infrastructure that will enable the production of battery separator material for approximately one million electric vehicles per year.
Control panels
Schedule & budget
EVs supported annually
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