SMM August 26th: South Korea's Posco decided to invest 281 billion won in the production line of ternary battery precursors and cathode materials jointly built by POSCO Group and China's Huayou Cobalt Co., Ltd., according to media reports on August 25.
It is reported that POSCO Group and Huayou Cobalt Industry established a joint venture production company of ternary battery precursor / cathode material in Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province in March 2018. at present, the annual production capacity of the two plants is 5000 tons.
This time, Posco will re-invest in a new ternary precursor / cathode material plant with an annual production capacity of 30, 000 tons on the basis of its previous production capacity. After the project reaches production capacity, its total capacity will reach 35000 tons / year.
Construction of the plant will begin in the second half of 2021 and production of high-nickel ternary materials for electric vehicles is expected to begin in 2023. It is estimated that its annual output of 35000 tons of lithium battery cathode materials can meet the use of 390000 60kWh-class electric vehicles. The cathode materials produced by the factory in Zhejiang Province will be supplied to local Chinese battery companies and South Korean battery companies moving into China in the future.
With regard to this news, the relevant person in charge of Huayou Cobalt replied on the afternoon of August 26 that the matter was an internal resolution of Posco and had communicated with Huayou Cobalt, but the decision had not yet been made, and if the information disclosure requirements were met later, Huayou Cobalt would make an announcement.
According to relevant media statistics, China alone accounts for 48% of Posco's sales of secondary battery materials in 2020. And Posco is not only preparing to lay out cathode materials for batteries in China, but also dabbling in the business of anode materials for lithium-ion batteries. On May 31, National Technology announced that it had signed a "letter of intent" with Posco to carry out business cooperation in the field of negative electrodes of lithium-ion batteries.
In addition, in March 2020, Posco decided to invest 211.7 billion won to build a new artificial graphite negative electrode production plant, which is expected to start in 2020, with an annual production capacity of 16000 tons and an estimated supply of about 360000 50 kWh electric vehicles.
