SK On Moves to Establish Tokyo Office to Expand Ties With Japanese Automakers, Explore ESS Opportunities

On April 21, at the 2026 CATL Super Tech Day, CATL officially released its third-generation Shenxing Superfast Charging Battery, supporting ultra-high-rate charging equivalent to 10C and peaking at 15C. Specifically, charging from 10% to 35% takes just 1 minute, and from 10% to 98% takes only 6 minutes and 27 seconds; in an extremely cold environment of -30°C, charging from 20% to 98% also takes only 9 minutes, comprehensively surpassing the flash charging technology previously released by BYD on March 5, which achieved charging from 10% to 97% in 9 minutes. More notably, the Shenxing battery does not exclusively possess this charging speed; the Kirin battery and Xiaoyao battery will also be fully equipped with this performance as standard in the future.

On April 21, Zijin Mining Group Co., Ltd. released its first quarter report for 2026. During the reporting period, the company achieved operating revenue of 98.498 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.79% compared to 78.928 billion yuan in the same period last year; total profit reached 31.584 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 115.03%; net profit was 25.166 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 101.90%. In the lithium segment, the company achieved lithium carbonate equivalent production of 16,000 tons. Several lithium mine projects are steadily ramping up capacity, and the northeastern project of the Manono Lithium Mine is expected to be completed and commence production in June 2026.

EMNI announced on April 21 that it has signed a lithium-ion cell supply contract worth approximately $650,000 (KRW 1 billion) with ADVANTEX Battery. Under the agreement, EMNI will supply a total of 457,600 cylindrical lithium-ion cells over four months from May to August, with monthly shipments of 114,400 cells. The total contract value amounts to $653,453. The supplied products are high-capacity cells certified under India’s BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards), meeting local quality and safety requirements.