SK Innovation, a subsidiary of SK Innovation’s material business, will build an additional electric vehicle battery separator plant in Poland. It is a large-scale project with an investment of over 1 trillion won, and is the largest single investment of SKIET ever.
SKIET held a board meeting on the 26th and announced on the 28th that it has decided to build the 3rd and 4th separator plant in Europe in Shillongsk, Poland with an investment of 1.3 trillion won. The production capacity of Europe’s third and fourth plants is 860 million square meters. Combined with the existing European 1st and 2nd factories, it will be able to produce 1.54 billion square meters of separators in Poland alone.
Construction of the 3rd and 4th plants will commence in the third quarter of this year and begin mass production from the end of 2023. The existing plant 1 will begin mass production in the third quarter of this year, and the second plant will begin mass production in the first quarter of 2023.
The separator is a core material for electric vehicle batteries, accounting for 15-20% of the cost. It has a direct impact on the safety and performance of lithium-ion batteries. According to the battery industry, the global separator market is expected to grow rapidly from 4 billion ㎡ last year to 16 billion ㎡ in 2025. It is also predicted that the supply shortage will begin from 2023. An official from SKIET explained, “As the global electric vehicle battery market is growing rapidly, demand is growing faster than expected, so we decided to make a preemptive investment.”
The separator SKIET produces in Europe is first supplied to its parent company, SK Innovation’s European plant. SK Innovation has a 17GWh plant in Hungary. It plans to increase production capacity to 47GWh by investing an additional 2.6 trillion won. It is known that SKIET will also supply separators to LG Energy Solutions, which are having a battery dispute with SK Innovation. LG Energy Solutions is currently operating a battery plant with an annual capacity of 70GWh in Wrocław, Poland.
With this investment, SKIET plans to expand its market share and maintain its No. 1 position in the global wet separator market. SKIET President Roh Jae-seok said, “So far, there has not been a single fire accident in the battery equipped with SKIET’s separator.”
In December of last year, SKIET applied for a preliminary examination for listing on the stock market. In the market, the enterprise value of SKIET is estimated at over 5 trillion won.
Reporter Mansoo Choi [email protected]
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