SK IE Technology fully operates a lithium-ion battery separator plant in Poland

8 October 2021, 00:13:25

SK IE Technology (SKIET), the material business subsidiary of SK Innovation announced that it held an opening ceremony for the lithium-ion battery separator plant in Silesia Province, Poland, the company's first European production base.

SKIET's first plant in Poland has completed after about 21 months of construction. It is expected to kick off commercial operation in the fourth quarter of this year. It makes SKIET the first company ever to gain a production foothold for lithium-ion battery separators in Europe, the largest global EV market. The amount of production is enough to be mounted to 300,000 electric vehicles, and the products will be supplied to global battery companies such as SK On.

SKIET plans to invest a total of KRW 2 trillion in Silesia Province, Poland by 2024 to secure the production capacity of 1,540 mil. m2 for the lithium-ion battery separators, which is the largest scale of battery separators production in Europe. Along with the first plant that begun its commercial production, the second plant with a 340 mil. m2 production capacity is under construction and aims at being ready for a commercial operation by 2023. And the third and fourth plants with respective 430 mil. m2 capacity have broken ground last July. It is anticipated that the global production capacity of SKIET encompassing South Korea, China, and Europe will reach a total of 2,730 mil. m2.

According to HIS market, market research agency, the European battery market will be expanded by five times from 82GWh this year to about 410GWh in 2026, the demand for separators will likely follow suit.

The separator is one of the four core materials for lithium-ion battery and is closely associated with battery stability and SKIET's separator is already supplied to global top major battery producers. As rising demand for high-density batteries brought the importance of battery stability to the fore, pushing the demand for high-quality separators is even higher. SKIET's battery separators stood out for it have not been implicated in not a single case of fire, thereby being recognized as unrivaled high-quality lithium-ion battery separators in the European Market.

As the global leader in 'Tier1' wet-laid battery separators, SKIET plans to capitalize on the commercial operation of the first Polish plant to preemptively secure the European lithium-ion battery separator market. Separators produced in SKIET's European production base receive flooding orders to the extent the units to be produced from its third and fourth plants have already signed up, not to mention ones from the second plant.

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