SK Innovation to develop Lithium-Ion Battery Separators in Poland

SK Innovation announced Wednesday that it will build a plant that manufactures lithium-ion battery separator (LiBS), the main material for electric vehicles, in Silesia, Poland. This is the third LiBS manufacturing site following the Jeungpyeong plant in North Chungcheong Province, Korea and the Changzhou plant in Jiangsu Province, China, which is currently under construction.

The annual production volume of the new factory in Poland will be 340 million square meters with an investment of some 430 billion won. SK Innovation also plans to expand the Jeungpyeong plan from an annual production amount of 360 million square meters to 530 million square meters by the end of November this year. When the expansion of the Jeungpyeong plant and the construction of plants in China and Poland are completed, the total annual production amount will increase to 1.21 billion square meters.

“When the construction for expansion and new plants is completed, we will be able to catch up with Japanese materials supplier Asahi Kasei Corp., which is the largest market for LiBS,” said an official from SK Innovation.

SK Innovation is also planning to equip itself with a mass production facility by investing 40 billion won into Jeungpyeong plant following the completion of constructing a plant for manufacturing “FCW,” which is the key material for foldable phones at the Technology Innovation Research Center in Daejeon. FCW is a material for foldable, flexible, and rollable display that are recently gaining attention. It has been said to be attached to part of the foldable phone that was released at the MWC 2019 held in Barcelona, Spain in February.


Tae-Ho Hwang taeho@donga.com