On March 14, Asahi Kasei issued an announcement announcing that the company had decided to strengthen its lithium battery separator production system.
It is understood that the company will invest 30 billion yen (about 1.8 billion yuan) to increase production facilities in Moriyama, Shiga Prefecture and the North Carolina base in the United States, in order to increase the Production capacity. At the same time, the company will rationally use existing equipment to review production projects and promote the integration of production lines to increase productivity.
The new equipment is expected to begin commercial operations in the first half of fiscal 2021.
Asahi Kasei said that as of the end of fiscal 2018, the company's annual capacity for lithium battery separators was 730 million square meters, of which wet-process separators were 410 million square meters and dry-process separators were 320 million square meters. With the completion of the production facilities currently under construction, the production capacity of wet diaphragms will reach 700 million square meters in 2020, and the dry diaphragms will be 400 million square meters, for a total of 1.1 billion square meters.
In addition, after strengthening the production system, Asahi Kasei ’s lithium battery separator production capacity is expected to reach 1 billion square meters of wet separators and 550 million square meters of dry separators in fiscal 2021.
It is reported that the company also said that the diaphragm market is rapidly developing with the focus on automotive applications such as electric vehicles and electric storage (ESS) applications. The company will also actively expand its business while paying close attention to demand trends, saying that it will establish a year in 2025 3 billion square meters of wet and dry diaphragm production system.