SK Innovation to Go Ahead with Plan for 2nd Car Battery Plant in Hungary
The company’s board of directors approves the plan for the auto battery plant in Komaron, northern Hungary, with an investment of 1 tln won
26(Tue), Mar, 2019
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President Kim Joon of SK Innovation is at a booth for self-driving vehicles at CES 2019 held in Las Vegas Jan. l8-11. (Photos: SK Inno)
SK Innovation, a holding company for oil refining and chemical affiliates of SK Group, plans to upgrade its global competitive power by building a second car battery plant in Hungary with an investment of 1 trillion won. The company also decided to set up an affiliate to turn out LiBS, a key part for the battery, taking the production line over from of SK Innovation.
The board of directors of SK Innovation held a meeting on Feb. 27 to approve a plan to set up a 2nd battery plant in Komaron City in northern Hungary by investing 945.2 billion won.
The board thought the Hungarian city was one of the best locations for its new battery plant overseas, as the city and its surrounding areas have a number of large foreign plants, including those set up by the parts suppliers for some of the major auto makers in the world including Audi, Suzuki and BYD including Continental and Bosch to name some.
SK Innovation is considered to expand its battery production capacity as the demand for its battery exceeded its output with a number of global automakers requesting to buy the car batteries from SK Innovation including Volkswagen. The 2nd battery plant in Komaron is scheduled to break its ground to build the plant in March and completion some time in 2022. SK Innovation already has a plant in Janjeou, in Jaingsu Province, China, built at the cost of 820 billion won.
The company is also in the middle of building a battery plant in Georgia, at a cost of 1.139,6 trillion won, to bring the company’s total investments in its three overseas EV plants to around 3 trillion won.
SK Innovation’s board approved the plan to split the separation membrane production from SK Innovation and give it to the company tentatively named SK I Material to prepare for the growing demand for the separation membranes of EV battery
SK Innovation secured 430,000 m2 of site in Komárom for the factory on a long-term contract with European carmakers for the construction of SK Battery Hungary last month in Komárom–Esztergom County, about 110 km northwest of Budapest, the capital of Hungary. SK Innovation plans to invest a total of 840.2 billion won until 2022.
The batteries to be produced in SK Battery Hungary will be third-generation EV batteries, which give an EV 500km range with one charge. The company had announced in September, 2017 that it would start mass-producing of the world’s first medium-to-large NCM (nickel, cobalt, manganese) pouches at a ratio of 8:1:1.
SK Battery Hungary is expected to work as an important bridgehead for expanding its business area into the European market.
SK Battery Hungary expects to start mass-producing and supplying the batteries from early 2020. Once all the production lines are installed, the factory’s production capacity will reach 7.5 GWh per year. SK Innovation is currently producing pouch type-batteries for EV at its Seosan battery factory in Korea, which produces 3.9 GWh annually.
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An aerial bird’s eyeview of SK Innovation’s battery plant in Hungary.
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