SK IE Technology’s global battery separator plant. Photo SK Innovation
SK Innovation’s material division subsidiary SK I Technology (SKIET) will invest 1 trillion won to expand a separator plant in Poland.
SKIET announced on the 28th, “We decided to open the board of directors and invest about 1.3 trillion won to build a battery separator plant 3 and 4 in Silongsk, Poland.” This is the largest single investment of SKIET in history, and the plant begins construction within three quarters and starts mass production from the end of next year. SKIET said, “As the electric vehicle/battery market is growing rapidly, the demand for purchases from related industries is increasing, so it is to respond preemptively.” The separator is a material that directly affects the safety and performance of an electric vehicle battery, and is a key component that accounts for about 15-20% of the battery cost.
The scale of the 3rd and 4th factories is 860 million m2, and when the 1st and 2nd factories currently under construction are combined, the annual production capacity of the separator in Poland will increase to 1.54 billion m2. SKIET is operating a plant with an annual production capacity of 860 million m2 in Jeungpyeong, Chungbuk and Changzhou, China. If the first and second factories in Poland and the new factory in Changzhou, China are sequentially operated within this year, the production capacity will reach 1.35 billion m2. It increases. SKIET will produce 2.73 billion square meters of separators in 2024 when all factories in Korea, China and Poland are in operation.
SKIET is focusing on wet separators among battery separators. According to SNE Research, SKIET occupied 26.8% of the global market share in the premium wet-type membrane market last year, surpassing Japan’s Asahi Kasei and Toray first place. SK Innovation said, “We have differentiated proprietary technologies such as’sequential stretching’ technology that realizes uniform quality while controlling the thickness of the separator freely, and separator coating technology that minimizes deformation even under heat and shock.”
According to the battery industry, the global separator market last year was about 4 billion square meters. However, it is predicted that in 2025, four years later, it will grow to about 16 billion square meters, resulting in a shortage of supply. SKIET President Roh Jae-seok said, “We will contribute to the electric vehicle industry and lead the company’s growth by supplying safe separators based on our unrivaled technology.” SK Innovation is filing a lawsuit in the US market over the infringement of LG Energy Solutions and battery trade secrets. Last month, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) raised LG’s hand in the final ruling, so SK Innovation cannot bring lithium-ion batteries to the US for 10 years.
Reporter Kim Young-joo [email protected]
