A Big Push for EV Battery Business
SK Innovation will invest 430 billion won (US$378 million) in Poland to build a Li-ion battery separator (LiBS) plant.
SK Innovation announced on March 27 that it will expand investment to accelerate the growth of its materials business, which is to be spun off on April 1.
The plant will be built on a site of 340 million square meters in Wojewodztwo Slaskie in Poland. It is as large as SK Innovation’s plant in Changzhou, China. The company will break ground for the plant in the third quarter of this year and start mass production at the company in the third quarter of 2021.
As the expansion of the Jeungpyeong plant in Korea is underway, when the plants in China and Poland are completed, SK Innovation’s total annual production of LiBS will swell to about 1.2 billion square meters. The Jeungpyeong plant currently has 11 production lines, with two additional lines to be completed in November 2019. When these facilities are completed, the plant’s annual production will increase from the current 360 million square meters to 530 million square meters.
On top of that, SK Innovation has completed a demonstration-type plant for mass production of flexible cover windows (FCWs), a core material of foldable phones which was unveiled at CES in Las Vegas in January. The plant, set up at the Technology Innovation Center in Daejeon, Korea, has started to roll out products.
The company is also constructing a mass production facility for FCWs in the Jeungpyeong LiBS factory in North Chungcheong Province, Korea by investing about 40 billion won. The plant is scheduled to start commercial operation in October. Considering the rapid expansion of the FCW market in the future, the company plans to build a second plant.