Korean Battery Industry to Invest 30 Trillion Won in Domestic Secondary Battery Complex by 2030

The Korean battery industry will accelerate its planned investment of 30 trillion won by 2030 as the Korean government designated Cheongju, Pohang, Saemangeum and Ulsan as specialized secondary battery clusters on July 20. It expects the clusters to create a domestic battery ecosystem value chain and pave the way for the development of next-generation batteries.

LG Energy Solution has announced a 4 trillion won investment in a production facility in Cheongju. This investment aims to develop Ochang Energy Plant in Cheongju into a mother factory, a global technology hub for the world’s battery production plants. Mother factories are characterized by the ability not only to test and produce products with next-generation design and process technologies, but also to verify a product’s volume production possibility. In particular, it will add production facilities for cylindrical batteries adopted by automakers, including Tesla.

LG Chem and Sungil Hitech are preparing to invest in Saemangeum. LG Chem plans to produce precursors through a 1.2 trillion won joint venture investment in the area with China’s Huayu Cobalt. A 100,000-ton-per-year production facility will be built by 2028. Sungil Hitech will build a plant to extract key minerals such as nickel and cobalt from used batteries in Saemangeum as well.

In Ulsan, Korea Precursor, a joint venture between LG Chem and Korea Zinc’s subsidiary KEMCO, will build a production facility dedicated to precursors, a key material for cathode materials. Korea Precursor is expected to reach a production capacity of 20,000 tons in 2024 and sales of 400 billion won in 2025. The company is considering expanding its capacity to 50,000 tons in the future.

POSCO Group and EcoPro will invest massively in Pohang. POSCO Group will secure nickel and precursor production facilities for secondary batteries with China’s CNGR. The investment will reach 1.5 trillion won. POSCO Holdings and CNGR will establish a nickel refinery with a 60:40 ratio of investment to produce nickel sulfate, and POSCO Future M and CNGR will set up a precursor production company with a 20:80 ratio of investment. CNGR is the world’s No. 1 precursor company by market share.

EcoPro will also invest 2 trillion won in Pohang to build Blue Valley Campus, a cathode material hub. This will become the second cathode material production base in Pohang after EcoBattery Pohang Campus completed in the Yeongilman General Industrial Complex in Pohang in 2021. EcoPro will expand its current 180,000-ton-a-year cathode production capacity to 710,000 tons by 2028 through the construction of Blue Valley Campus. Ground will be broken for Blue Valley Campus in the fourth quarter of this year. EcoPro aims to begin to run it in the second half of 2025.

The Korean battery industry expects that the planned investment will complete a value chain for a domestic battery ecosystem with mineral processing in Saemangeum, materials in Pohang, cells in Cheongju and Ulsan, and recycling in Saemangeum.