Posco Chemical held a board meeting on March 30 and decided to invest 217.7 billion won to build a new artificial graphite anode production plant.
The new material plant is located in the Blue Valley National Industrial Park in Pohang, with an estimated annual output of 16,000 tons and a supply of approximately 360,000 50-kilowatt-hour electric vehicles. Construction of the plant will begin this year and be completed in 2023.
Due to raw materials and process characteristics, the internal structure of artificial graphite anode materials is more stable than natural graphite products. In addition, it has a long life and is conducive to fast charging, so it is mainly used in electric vehicles.
Posco Chemical's subsidiary PMC Tech provides needle coke raw materials, which enables Posco Chemical to greatly reduce the production cost of negative electrode materials, but also has the long life and fast charging characteristics of artificial graphite.
Posco Chemical said that the electric vehicle secondary battery market is expected to grow from 194GWh in 2020 to 366GWh in 2023. Therefore, the demand for artificial graphite anode materials will also increase sharply, and it is necessary to expand production capacity.
Japanese and Chinese companies have always dominated the market for artificial graphite anode materials. Posco Chemical plans to study next-generation materials in the secondary battery materials research center. Based on the output in 2023, it will expand natural graphite anode materials by 105,000 tons, 16,000 tons of artificial graphite and 90,000 tons of positive and negative electrode materials to increase global market share.