SK Innovation is expected to invest about KRW 1 trillion in battery and membrane business, including building an electric vehicle battery plant in Hungary.

SK Innovation announced on November 30 that it decided to invest KRW 840.2 billion in the electric vehicle battery production plant in Hungary by opening a board meeting on November 29.

The plant is capable of producing 7.5GWh of battery per year on a 430,000 ㎡ site, and is scheduled to commence construction in February next year. We will start full-scale mass production from early 2020.

An representative of SK Innovation stated, "The actual amount of investment and the time of construction of the plant can be changed depending on the acquisition of licenses according to local laws and the schedule of factory site acquisition."

Meanwhile, the company has recently been selecting sites for the Czech and Hungarian companies to pursue the fast-growing European electric car market.

Besides, SK Innovation plans to invest about KRW 200 billion to expand lithium-ion battery separator production facility in Seongsan Battery Factory and battery cell production facility in Seosan Battery Factory in Chungbuk Information & Electronic Materials Factory in Chungbuk.

The company will expand its two facilities and expand annual membrane production capacity to about 500 million square meters by the second half of 2019 by investing about KRW 150 billion in the Jeongpyeong plant.

The company is the second largest global wet membrane market and supplies membranes to a number of electronics companies that produce world-leading battery manufacturers and IT products.

Until the third quarter of this year, cumulative sales of information and electronic materials totaled KRW 246.2 billion and operating profit reached KRW 54.7 billion, with an OP margin of 22.5%.

In Seosan, one production facility is added to the second battery plant.

The company, which has a production capacity of 3.9GWh per annum at Seosan`s existing plants 1 ~ 3 and 4 ~ 6 under construction, will have a total production capacity of 4.7GWh plus 0.8GWh of production capacity of the 7th plant.

Investments is not disclosed, but it was reported that tens of billions of won would be added to one battery production line.

The company is expect produce a `3rd generation electric car battery` that can run at a distance of 500km on a single charge basis or run over 60km on a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) in the new production line, which will be fully operational from the second half of next year do.

The battery is expected to contain new technologies such as pouch NCM (nickel cadmium-manganese) 811 technology that increases the specific gravity of nickel from 60% to 80% to increase energy density.

SK Innovation`s battery production capacity will increase to a total of 12.2GWh annually once the investment plan to be completed, including the expansion of the Hungary plant and the Seosan plant, is completed.

Previously, Chey Tae-won, SK chairman, asked each subsidiary to fundamentally innovate its business structure (Deep Change 2.0), saying, "If you do not read the changes, you can do Sudden Deaths within five years instead of ten.


By Park Jung Il comja77@


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