SKIET bets big on Europe's battery separator market

DABROWA GORNICZA, Poland – The production line of lithium-ion battery separators in SK IE Technology Co.’s (SKIET) factory in Dąbrowa Górnicza, Poland was filled with warm heat and a light smell of oil on June 12, local time.

Its 120-meter-long assembly line was working without interruption to pull out separator fibers, the base component of a separator material, in six-step processes with no human intervention.

The same goes for the ceramic coated separator (CCS) manufacturing process, where fine ceramic powders coat flimsy separator fabric that feels like vinyl, resulting in a thin but solid separator membrane. 

“The less the separation membrane is touched by human hands, the lower the defect rate and the lower the cost,” Lee Choong-hwan, a CCS manager told reporters wearing dustproof clothes, shoes and hats to tour the factory.

It was the first time the South Korean electric vehicle material maker unveiled its separators-producing facility to the media. The factory measures 340 million square meters, or half the area of Seoul Metropolitan City.

The SK Group unit plans to spend a total of 2.2 trillion won ($1.7 billion) to expand its capacity in the Eastern European country, building tree additional production lines by the end of next year. The second one is scheduled for mass production later this year.

SKIET is a frontrunner in the market of wet-process separators, which are becoming the mainstream of EV batteries thanks to their stronger mechanical properties and higher quality than dry-process separators.

A separator is one of three key ingredients of batteries, together with cathodes and anodes and makes up 10-15% of battery manufacturing costs. 

It acts as an electronically isolating layer between cathodes and anodes in a battery and serves as a channel where lithium ions move between positive and negative electrodes. It prevents batteries from overeating and ensures battery safety.

POLAND

The factory in southern Poland has been mass-producing battery separators since the second half of 2021.

It is SKIET’s fourth factory after two domestic plants in North Chungcheong Province and one in Changzhou, China. The Chinese plant began mass production in the second half of 2021.

SKIET’s second manufacturing line in the Polish city will be up and running from the end of this year. Its third and fourth lines there are 85% completed and will likely begin to churn out products around the end of next year.

By the end of 2024, its Polish facility will become the single largest battery separator plant in the world. Their total output will reach 1.54 billion square meters of separators per year, enough for batteries to supply 20.5 million EVs.

That will likely allow SKIET to take a 30% share of Europe’s battery separator market by 2025.

AHEAD OF RIVALS

Park Byeong-cheol, head of SKIET’s Poland operations, showed confidence about its competitive advantage over foreign competitors such as Toray Industries Inc. and WCP of Japan, as well as China’s Shanghai Energy New Materials Technology.

Those rivals are building separator plants in Europe, but have not yet reached their mass production stages, he said.

Alongside the capacity expansion, SKIET is now striving to reduce its dependence on affiliate battery maker SK On Co. from the current 80% to 50% of its sales.

SKIET Chief Executive Kim Cheol-jung said in February that the company was studying the possibilities to advance to the North American market. 

If it sets up a production line in the US, it could increase its annual production to 4 billion square meters per year by 2025. That compares with its total output of 2.73 billion square meters it expects to reach, once all the additional lines at the Poland factory start operation in 2024.

Further, it will likely attract new customers shifting away from Chinese materials suppliers to meet the battery sourcing requirements under the US Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at containing China’s influence.

The company will finalize a decision by the end of this year on whether or not to build a factory in North America.

SKIET recently secured a long-term supply contract with a foreign company, which was speculated to be Tesla Inc.

Write to Nan-Sae Bin at binthere@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.