SK Innovation is negotiating with Volkswagen and its Chinese partners to establish a battery joint venture, and it is close to reaching an agreement to build a factory in China. Who is SKI? What is its strategic layout for the development of the lithium battery industry? What impact and enlightenment will the development of China's lithium battery industry bring? SMM will reveal SKI's global lithium battery strategic layout for readers from product development directions, capacity expansion routes, and upstream and downstream cooperation priorities.
SKI: Layout of Global Energy Supply
Attaching great importance to the Chinese market Established in 1962, SK Innovation is the first oil refining company in South Korea. Its business covers multiple fields, including exploration and production (E & P), batteries, information and electronic materials. It owns South Korea's first oil refining company SK Energy, petrochemical company SK Global Chemical, global lubricants company SK Lubricants, refining chemical company SK Incheon Petrochem and trader SK Trading International. SKI Lithium Battery Division has been paying attention to the Chinese market for a long time. As early as 2013, it jointly established Beijing Electric Control Aisikai Technology Co., Ltd. with BAIC Group and Beijing Electronics Holdings Co., Ltd., which mainly produces the core of pure electric vehicles-power. The battery, with a total investment of 1 billion yuan, was the first domestic-foreign joint venture battery company in China. Following the release of the new policy, the company failed to enter the Chinese battery company directory, and it was difficult to compete with its peers without government subsidies. Management had to stop the plan to build a power battery plant in China, and the project was stalled until Shortlisted in the "White List of Automotive Power Storage Battery and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Industry (First Batch)" released in May 2018, SKI announced at the end of 2018 to restart the joint venture battery plant project with BAIC Group and Beijing Electronics Holdings Co., Ltd. in Changzhou, Jiangsu. .
Product: Breakthrough focus on high nickel ternary with silicon carbon anode
In the field of lithium batteries, SKI focuses on soft pack batteries. The current soft pack battery cathode material is mainly NCM622. It should be developed into a NCM811 hybrid system in 2019 and a 100% NCM811 system in 2020. The Ni content is expected after 2021. Will reach 90%. The anode material currently uses graphite, and it is expected that silicon carbon anodes will be used after 2021. At present, the energy density of the 64Ah soft-packed cells that SKI mass-produced in 2018 can reach 260Wh / kg and the volume energy density can reach 540Wh / L. SKI's anode material system will be upgraded from NCM 622 to NCM 811 system doped with NCM 811 in 2019. The anode material will be upgraded from graphite to silicon carbon anode in 2021-2022. The energy density target in 2020 is 284Wh / kg, and the energy density target in 2021 is 294Wh / kg. The energy density is expected to reach 314Wh / kg in 2022. With the use of silicon carbon anodes, the energy density will reach 319Wh / kg in 2023. In addition, SKI is the first company in South Korea and the third company in the world to develop a commercial battery separator. It has patented low shrinkage and high heat-resistant patented technologies for separator manufacture. The company's nine production lines in Zengping County are responsible for supplying 17% of global demand for lithium battery separators.
Capacity: Poland, China, and the United States have rapidly expanded their new terminal production capacity
SKI's current production capacity is only 4.7GWh, and it is planned to reach 20Gwh in 2020; after the US plant is put into operation in 2022, the production capacity will reach 30Gwh.
1) At the end of 2017, SKI invested 8000 trillion won (about 734 million U.S. dollars) in Hungary in Europe to build a battery factory. It is expected to achieve mass production in 2020, and its total electric vehicle battery production capacity will reach 7 GWh.
2) At the end of August 2018, SKI restarted its cooperation project with BAIC Motors. It will invest RMB 5 billion to build a power battery plant with an annual output of 7.5Gwh in Changzhou. The new plant is scheduled to be completed in the second half of 2019, and mass production will begin in early 2020. .
3) At the end of 2018, SKI decided to build a new power battery plant in the United States. The new battery plant is expected to start in early 2019 and will be put into production in 2022. The total investment will reach 1.14 trillion won (about 6.15 billion yuan) and be put into production. The initial annual output target value is 9.8GWh. After additional investment in the later period, the annual production capacity is expected to reach about 55GWh.
4) SKI also plans to expand its production capacity at Seosan Battery Factory in South Korea to 5GWh.
5) In addition, SKI plans to invest about 400 billion won (about 2.44 billion yuan) to build a new lithium-ion battery separator and ceramic-coated separator production plant in Changzhou. The plant will have 4 production lines for lithium-ion battery separators and 3 production lines for ceramic-coated separators. Construction will begin in 2019 for mass production in the third quarter of 2020.
6) SKI is also investing 2.536 billion yuan in Poland to build a new diaphragm factory with an annual output of 470 million square meters. Mass production is expected in the third quarter of 2021.
Upstream: High attention to lithium salt supply
SKI, EcoPro and Tianqi Lithium have recently signed a "long-term supply agreement", which stipulates that the total annual sales volume of lithium hydroxide products in a single year will account for about 20% of the annual production capacity of TLK's lithium hydroxide construction project in the Qana, Australia % -25%. In addition, the three parties also signed a "Memorandum of Understanding", which agreed on the battery supply chain and related technology research and development, which is valid for two years. The "Memorandum of Understanding" signed this time is an intentional document.
It is worth noting that Volkswagen, an important downstream of SKI, recently signed a Strategic Cooperation Memorandum with Ganfeng Lithium to establish a long-term strategic cooperation relationship. Ganfeng Lithium will provide lithium to Volkswagen's planned capacity and cost of electric vehicles Safe supply of raw materials. In addition, Volkswagen will also cooperate with Ganfeng Lithium on future issues such as battery recycling and solid-state batteries.
Downstream: In-depth cooperation with well-known global car companies
SKI supplies power batteries for Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Daimler, BAIC and many other well-known domestic and foreign car companies. At the end of 2018, Volkswagen Group announced that it chose SKI as its modular electric toolkit (MEB). ) The platform's electric car supplies batteries. Volkswagen Group brands (Audi, Seat, Porsche, Volkswagen and Skoda as well as luxury brands Bentley, Bugatti and Lamborghini) plan to launch 50 new all-electric models on the road. By 2025, it is necessary to equip its own electric fleet. By 2025, the group will need more than 150GWh of battery capacity per year. For Europe, Volkswagen has identified LG Chem, Samsung and SKI as strategic suppliers. From 2019, these partners will ensure battery supply. From 2022, SKI will also meet the needs of the Group's North American market. China's strategic partner is CATL, which will supply batteries for the group's own electric vehicles starting in 2019.
SMM believes that as the competition between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean battery companies becomes increasingly fierce, the small advantages of any of the three dimensions of cost, performance, and scale will provide a powerful boost to the fierce battle and achieve a rich market segmentation. In return.