■ To make a financial story of SK Innovation with a bold investment in deep change direction, construct an additional separator production line with an annual capacity of 340 million m²

■ To solidify its World No. 1 position with 30% market share by 2025 through securing global production bases and making timely investments

■ To increase production scale from current 530 million m² up to 1870 million m² in 2023

■ CEO of SK IE Technology Rho Jae-sok: “We will contribute to vitalizing the battery industry ecosystem and complete deep change of SK Innovation by strengthening unrivaled technology competitiveness, establishing global production bases, and timely expansion”

SK IE Technology (CEO & President: Roh Jae-sok), a material business subsidiary of SK Innovation, will make additional investments in a separator plant under construction in the Province of Silesia, Poland, to accelerate its efforts to tap into the global market.

SK Innovation’s strategy is to complete a new financial story through Deep Change, which expands its refinery-chemical oriented business into batteries and materials through a bold enterprise-wide investment.

SK IE Technology has announced on the 29^th that it will build an additional production line for LiBS (Lithium-ion Battery Separator) with an annual production capacity of 340 million m² at its plant in Poland. The new facility is scheduled for mass production in the first quarter of 2023. SK IE Technology is constructing a 340 million m² separator production line in Poland with the aim of mass production in third quarter of of 2021.

The reason for such an aggressive investment of SK IE Technology is to secure a global production base in the fast-growing separator market along with the rapid growth of the EV market, thereby raising its market share to win the unrivaled World No. 1. The scale of separator market is estimated to be about 4.1 billion m² this year, and expected to be 15.9 billion m² by 2025.

SK IE Technology aims to solidify its world No. 1 position in the wet separator market with a market share of about 30% in 2025, based on the competitiveness to manufacture premium separators, while increasing production capacity faster than the market growth rate by securing global production bases in China, Poland, etc.

SK IE Technology already has a separator production line with an annual production capacity of 530 million m² at its factory in Jeungpyeong, Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea. The new plants that are under construction in Poland and China will be launched sequentially, and production capacity will be about 1370 million m² by the end of next year. With the additional investment in Poland this time, it is expected to have a total production capacity of 1870 million m² by the end of 2023, which is more than three times the current production capacity.

SK IE Technology is leading the global separator market with its unrivaled technology. The world’s first “sequential stretching” technology developed by SK IE Technology can freely extend the separator with uniform quality to make separators with the desired material and thickness. With this technology, the company is able to make products that meet the diverse needs of battery manufacturers, and is evaluated as a firm that can produce thin separators with the most uniform quality in the world. SK IE Technology is currently able to manufacture separators with a thickness of 4 micrometers. Given that a string of hair is about 100 micrometers thick, it is only about 1/25.

In addition, the durability of the separator is significantly increased by the ceramic coated separator (CCS) technology. CCS is a technology that applies a fine ceramic layer on the separator, which reduces the risk of fire by preventing deformation or contraction of the separator as much as possible despite the heat emitted from large batteries.

President of SK IE Technology Rho Jae-sok said, “We will strengthen business competitiveness based on our unrivaled technological competitiveness. We will also keep contributing to vitalization of the fast-growing battery industry ecosystem by increasing our production capacity through the establishment of global production bases and timely expansions, while completing the Deep Change of SK Innovation.”

[Photos]

(Photo 1) An employee of SK IE Technology checks the separators being produced at Jeungpyeong factory in Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea.

(Photo 2) An employee of SK IE Technology introduces the separator produced by the company