SK Innovation Vows to Increase Electric Vehicle Battery Production 20-Fold by 2025

SK Innovation announced on May 27 that it would ramp up its battery production 20-fold from the current level by 2025. 

Kim Joon, president of SK Innovation, declared his company's determination to pursue innovation to achieve the new goal at a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul.

"Through Deep Change 2.0 Management which has been implemented since 2017, we have strengthened global competitiveness of our new and existing businesses, but we feel that there is still a long way to go," Kim said.

"For instance, the social value of SK Innovation is more than minus 1 trillion won (US$841 million)," Kim said. This means the value of unintended harm to society caused by the company in the process of its business activities is worth more than 1 trillion won.

"We will follow a contrarian strategy to use our negative social value as momentum for determined push for innovation. We will pursue both economic value and social value under a double bottom line (DBL) management approach," Kim said.

Kim suggested a vision to grow the company's EV battery business into one of the world's top three by 2025. To this end, SK Innovation will commercialize "NCM 9½½," a next-generation battery technology for the first time in the world. The technology uses nickel, cobalt and manganese at a ratio of 90 percent, 5 percent and 5 percent, respectively, and a battery cathode which is at least 670 Wh/ℓ. An electric car powered by a battery produced through this technology can run more than 500 kilometers on a single charge.

SK Innovation aims to inflate its battery order backlog from 430 GWh to 700 GWh by 2025 and dial up production to 100 GWh from the current level of about 5GWh per year.

In the lithium-ion battery separator (LiBS) business, SK Innovation will aime for a market share of 30 percent by increasing its production capacity to over 2.5 billion square meters per year. For this, it plans to secure new production facilities in addition to those under construction in China and Poland.

SK Innovation will pursue the growth of the chemical business. The packaging sector, which was selected as a new main business area, will secure a portfolio of high value-added products through mergers and acquisitions, while the automotive business unit will focus on technology development to accelerate the diffusion of electric vehicles and produce lighter vehicles.

SK Innovation will elevate the proportion of assets in these high-growth business areas from 30 percent to 60 percent by 2025.

In the petroleum business, the company looks to expand sales of petroleum products to Southeast Asian nations such as Vietnam, Myanmar, and the Philippines.

As for the lubricant business, SK Innovation will expand its global partnership with LeSpol, Pertamina, and JXTG to other major companies. The company has also decided to expand its oil exploration and production (E&P) business to Asia, mainly China, Vietnam and the United States with rich shale oil.