On June 30th, SKC announced that it plans to expand the production capacity of aluminum foil for power batteries to more than 200000 tons by 2025. To this end, we will first consider additional investment in Europe and the United States, where there are more rechargeable battery customers, with the goal of identifying specific European regions to enter within this year and start construction.
SK nexilis, the copper foil manufacturing company of SKC, recently decided at a board meeting to build a secondary battery copper foil plant with an annual capacity of 50, 000 tons in Europe, and decided to continue its investment in the future. In Europe, the first area to consider is Poland. SK nexilis will decide on the specific region after negotiating the investment conditions with the Polish government as soon as possible. Poland is a very convenient place for customers. Poland and neighboring countries have four major global manufacturers of rechargeable batteries. Compared with Malaysian factories, Poland can ensure more land, so it is also very expansionary.
SKC believes that Europe can provide large-scale renewable energy needed to make copper foil, so it can fully comply with RE100. SKC has said it will implement RE100 in Malaysia, including follow-up investments in factories under construction. If the European factory fully implements the RE100,SKC copper foil business, the total RE100 performance level will rise to 70%.
After determining the investment area, SK nexilis will immediately proceed with the design, licensing and other preparatory work. The goal is to start work this year and complete it by 2024. In this way, the production capacity of SKC copper foil will reach 152000 tons.
