EV battery packs made by LG Chem. (image: LG Chem Ltd.)
SEOUL, Mar. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — LG Chem Ltd., South Korea’s leading electric vehicle (EV) battery maker, is considering a second plant in Europe to meet growing demand, industry sources said Monday.
LG Chem already has an electric car battery production plant in Poland. In November, LG Chem decided to invest 651 billion won (US$577 million) in its Polish battery plant to expand capacity.
Late last year, LG Chem announced investments totaling 3 trillion won. In October, the country’s largest chemical company said it will invest 2.1 trillion won by 2023 to build an EV battery plant in China in the latest move to meet growing demand for batteries for zero-emissions cars.
The plant in Nanjing in southeastern China is set to roll out enough electric vehicle batteries annually to power more than 500,000 vehicles, according to LG Chem.
LG Chem has another EV battery plant in Nanjing and similar operations in South Korea, the United States and Poland.
LG Chem entered the EV battery business in 2009 and has supplied batteries to global carmakers such as Audi and Renault-Nissan. It currently operates EV battery plants in China, the United States and South Korea.
LG Chem said earlier it aims to raise its EV battery production capacity to 110 gigawatt hours (GWh) by 2020 from the current 34 GWh.
Meanwhile, SK Innovation Co., another South Korean EV battery maker, announced a plan last month to spend 950 billion won on a second EV battery plant in Hungary to meet growing demand in Europe.
The plant in the northwestern Hungarian city of Komarom will be completed by 2020, with operations expected to start in 2022, the company said.
In October, SK Innovation, a latecomer to the EV battery field, unveiled a 1.14 trillion-won project to build a production plant in the United States. The plant, in the city of Commerce in Jackson County, Georgia, will have a capacity of 9.8 GWh.
(Yonhap)
