Lee Jae-yong Meets with Vietnamese Prime Minister
Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jae-yong met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Vietnam on Oct. 20.
According to local news outlets, they discussed an increase in investment related to battery and smartphone manufacturing and Samsung SDI may announce a plan to build an electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant in Vietnam. At present, Samsung SDI has no battery production lines in Vietnam although it has local assembly lines for mobile phone battery assembly and supply to Samsung Electronics Vietnam.
According to those in the industry, Samsung SDI needs to build a new plant to increase its market share. Samsung SDI is currently the fourth-largest electric vehicle battery supplier in the world behind LG Chem, CATL and Panasonic.
Samsung SDI recently initiated manufacturing facility expansion in Hungary in order to double its production lines to eight. Once the expansion is completed, it will produce 20 GWh of electric vehicle batteries in Hungary alone. The capacity is close to Samsung SDI’s total production volume for last year.