PI Advanced Materials said on April 26 that it will spend 73 billion won (about 430 million yuan) to build a new PI (polyimide) film production line.
The new production line will have an annual production capacity of 600 metric tons and will produce polyimide films for electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries.
The company said that this new production line will start operations in 2023.
In November, PI Advanced Materials announced plans to build a thin film production line for optical and thin film chips. The production line is also planned to have an annual production capacity of 600 metric tons.
The company said that although the company usually adds a polyimide film production line every two to three years, the expansion is fast due to high demand in many aspects.
After the completion of the two production lines, the South Korean company will have a total of 9 polyimide film production lines and 1 varnish production line.
Its current production capacity is 3,900 metric tons, but it will be expanded to 5,100 metric tons at the same time.
The newly announced production line will be "metal-free." This means that the production line will be designed so that metal impurities are not mixed with the product during the production process. The latest ninth production line is the company's first production line to apply this technology.
A company spokesperson said that films used in electric vehicles and mobile phone batteries require high-purity insulating materials to ensure reliability.
They also said that the addition of new production lines will enable other production lines to produce other products as needed, which will enable the company to better save costs.
In the first quarter, PI Advanced Materials’ sales revenue was 77.6 billion won and operating income was 20.7 billion won, an increase of 25.9% and 40.6% respectively over the same period last year.
Sales of films for flexible printed circuit boards were 31 billion won, an increase of 21.9% over the same period last year. Insulating sheet was 26.3 billion won, an increase of 18.2%, and advanced industrial film was 20.3 billion won, an increase of 45.7%.
Sales related to electric vehicles (including varnishes for motors and insulating films) increased by 39.1% year-on-year. During the same period, sales of display applications increased by 49.5%. The number of capacitors used in multilayer ceramic capacitors increased by 292.3%.
The spokesperson said that the overall demand is tight, while the demand for OLED is high. They added that the plant's capacity utilization rate in the quarter was 89.4%, an increase of 10.2% over the same period last year.