SK On, SKI's battery division, recently signed an agreement with Yancheng, Jiangsu province, to invest 3 trillion won (16.3 billion yuan) to build a new electric vehicle battery production base in Yancheng, which is expected to start construction in 2022 and can produce more than 10GWh batteries each year, Yonhap news agency reported.
This is SKI's fourth battery factory in China and the first 100% owned by SKI. SKI's other three lithium battery factories in China are located in Changzhou (7GWh), Yancheng (10GWh) and Huizhou (10GWh). Among them, the Changzhou plant is a joint venture with Beijing Automobile, and the Yancheng and Huizhou plants are joint ventures with Chinese battery manufacturer EVE.
Vike Lithium noted that two months ago, on Sept. 1, SKI announced that it would build a fourth car battery plant in China, with a planned investment of US $1.06 billion (about 6.8 billion yuan). At that time, SKI's battery business did not have its own door, because SK On was founded on October 1st.
At present, in the agreement signed between SKI and Yancheng in Jiangsu Province, the investment amount is as high as 16.3 billion yuan, an increase of 239.71% over the original plan, which fully shows that SKI is optimistic about the power battery market.
SKI is meant to be number one in the world.
In the first three quarters of 2021, SKI ranked fifth in the global power battery installed list, behind only Ningde Times, LG New Energy, Panasonic and BYD, while South Korea's Samsung SDI ranked sixth.
In the first three quarters of SKI, the installed capacity of power batteries was 10.6 GWH, with a market share of 5.4%, 2.5% lower than that of BYD in fourth place and 0.8% higher than that of Samsung SDI in sixth place.
In other words, for a period of time in the future, SKI is likely to be the fifth in the world and the second in South Korea.
But SKI's goal is to become the number one power battery company in the world. To achieve this goal, in early July this year, SKI announced that it would spin off the battery business and go public independently, and launched a program called "1 Terawatt + α." Plan: to invest 30 trillion won ($26.5 billion, 163 billion yuan) within five years to "shift its business from carbon emissions to green (energy business)".
Obviously, the current investment of 3 trillion won is only 1/10 of SKI 30 trillion won.
It is reported that SKI currently has a production capacity of about 40GWhh and has factories in South Korea, China, the United States and Hungary. It is estimated that the annual production capacity of SKI will increase to 85GWH by 2023 and to 200GWh by 2025. SKIn aims to achieve annual production capacity of 500GWh by 2030.
Large investment is the only way for SKI to become number one in the world, and having huge orders may be the strength of SKI.
It is understood that at the end of October, SK On has announced that it has a backlog of orders for about 1.6TWh, which are used for batteries worth about 220 trillion won and can power about 23 million electric vehicles.
Lithium power plants in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province
Yancheng, Jiangsu Province is becoming the "capital of lithium electricity". With the implementation of SKI's new plant and its joint venture with Yiwei Lithium Energy, SKI will have two world-class lithium power plants in Yancheng.
On October 29, Honeycomb signed an investment framework agreement with Yancheng Dafeng High-tech Zone. According to the agreement, Honeycomb Energy will invest 10 billion yuan to build a 22GWh lithium-ion power battery project in Dafeng High-tech Zone.
On August 6, Yancheng Fudi Battery Co., Ltd. was established. It is understood that BYD will also lay out a power battery production base in Yancheng.
Jiewei Power Yancheng Base plans a total investment of 6 billion yuan and a planned production capacity of 10GWh.
Putian 5G intelligent energy storage battery project, which is located in Yanlong Street of Yancheng High-tech Zone, adopts intelligent operation and maintenance, intelligent access, emergency communication and other technologies, and four new energy storage battery production lines are added. After all the battery is completed and put into production, it can produce energy storage battery 4GWh annually.
Shenzhen Haiying holding 4GWH lithium battery project has been settled in Yancheng Dafeng Economic Development Zone, with a total investment of 4 billion yuan.
Jiangsu Fengying lithium battery project is also located in Yancheng Dafeng High-tech Zone, with a total investment of 2 billion yuan and a production scale of 600 million ampere-hour lithium battery in the first phase.
