SK Innovation To Build Second EV Battery Plant in Hungary

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--South Korean electric vehicles (EV) battery maker SK Innovation is determined to boost its presence in the fast-growing European EV market with confirmation that it will invest a further 750 million euros ($859 million) to build a second battery plant in Hungary.

The company confirmed that the new plant will be built on an 117,130-square-metre parcel of land, which is part of the 430,000 square-metre site in Komarom, Hungary, where construction started last March on the first plant. The plant currently under construction will have a production capacity of 7.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) when completed late this year, with the production lines due to start rolling in 2020. By 2022, the full annual capacity of 7.5 GWh will be possible. The company has not revealed the proposed capacity of the second plant, but groundbreaking will take place this month. SK Innovation battery customers include Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai-Kia Motors.

Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó welcomed the investment: "The government will be contributing to the project with non-returnable funding, but negotiations with the investors are still underway with relation to the level of that funding." He told media that high added value-generating production and deployment of state-of-the-art technologies in Hungary justified the state assistance.

By 2021 when the new plant is completed, SK Innovation's global production capacity is expected to include the first Komarom plant (7.5 GWh per year) and the new No.2 Komarom plant, the Changzhou plant in China (7.5 GWh per year), the Georgia plant in the U.S. (9.8 GWh per year). SK Innovation's first plant is based in Seosan, Korea, with a capacity of 4.7 GWh per year.

Kim Jun, chief executive officer of SK Innovation, said during CES 2019 that the projects will help the company take a step closer to its mid- and long-term goals to "increase battery production capacity to 60 GWh by 2022 and join the ranks of the best EV battery producers. SK Innovation will be able to strengthen the position of our battery business in the European market by deciding to build a new plant as an expansion of our first plant in Europe. SK Innovation will become one of the best global EV battery producers by 2022 and raise the value of our company by obtaining production capacity to utilise our technological process."

The new Hungary plant announcement comes just months after the company announced plans to create more than 2,000 jobs and invest $1.67 billion to build a new EV battery manufacturing plant in Commerce, Jackson County, Georgia, U.S. Construction will occur in two phases, beginning in early 2019. The first phase will cost approximately $1 billion and employ more than 1,000 advanced manufacturing employees.

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