SK Innovation signs an agreement with Ecopro to purchase about 55 billion yuan of high nickel cathode materials

According to SK Innovation News, SK and South Korean material manufacturer Ecopro BM recently signed a large-scale procurement agreement at the SK Seorin Building in Seoul, South Korea., Ecopro BM will supply it with 10 trillion won (about 55 billion yuan) worth of high-nickel cathode materials from 2024 to 2026. The company will also cooperate with Ecopro BM and its holding company Ecopro in the field of cathode materials to enhance competitiveness.

According to foreign media reports, according to the current average selling price, it is equivalent to Ecopro BM supplying 110000 tons of NCM,-capable 73GWh batteries every year, and it is expected to supply more than 300000 tons of NCM within three years.

According to the data, SK Innovation has been working closely with Ecopro BM in high-nickel batteries. In 2019, NCM9 batteries were successfully developed. Nickel accounts for about 90% of nickel, cobalt and manganese. Ford's electric truck Fmuri 150 Lightning is equipped with batteries made of NCM9 materials.

The two sides also reached an agreement to cooperate in a number of areas in the future, including joint investment in materials related to cathode materials, construction of factories at home and abroad, and recycling of waste batteries.

In addition, the battery network learned that on September 16th, the SK innovation battery division spin-off project was approved with an approval rate of 80.2%. The company says its fast-growing battery business has received a backlog of more orders than 1TWh, which requires it to increase its battery capacity from the current annual 40GWh to more than 200GWh by 2025.

As a result, the SK innovation signed large-scale procurement agreements, or large-scale procurement of related materials to meet battery production due to the surge in battery orders.

It is worth noting that with the rapid increase of downstream customers' demand for high-nickel power battery materials, the domestic production lines for high-nickel cathode materials are basically in full production. Take Rongbai Technology as an example, in the first half of this year, shipments of high-nickel and ultra-high-nickel ternary cathode materials increased by about 135% in the first half compared with the same period last year, and sales increased by about 50% in the second quarter compared with the same period last year; each base is in full production, high-nickel NCM polycrystal and single crystal, NCA mass production.

At present, Rongbai Technology is promoting the production capacity expansion of Hubei Phase 5, Zunyi Phase II and South Korea Phase I by Synchronize, and the total production capacity of cathode materials is expected to reach more than 120000 tons by the end of the year. By the end of June, the production capacity of Rongbai high-nickel cathode materials has increased by more than 20,000 tons, and the remaining 60,000 tons of new high-nickel cathode production capacity will be gradually released in the third and fourth quarters of this year. The total production capacity of precursors is estimated to be about 90,000 tons by the end of 2022, of which the project Linshan Phase 1-1 with an annual output of 30,000 tons of high nickel precursors is expected to achieve partial production by the end of the year.