SKC to Establish Factories in Europe and the US... Expanding Copper Foil Production to 250,000 Tons by 2025

Becoming the World's Largest Copper Foil Producer Upon Completion of Overseas Investment
Priority Review of Establishing a Factory in Poland

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] SKC is expanding its production capacity of copper foil, a core material for electric vehicle batteries, to over 200,000 tons by 2025. To achieve this, it will make additional investments in Europe and the United States, where many secondary battery customers are located. The goal is to finalize the European expansion site and begin construction within this year.

SK Nexilis, SKC's copper foil manufacturing investment company, decided at its board meeting on the 25th to build a 50,000-ton annual capacity copper foil plant for secondary batteries in Europe. It plans to continuously invest to expand total production capacity to over 200,000 tons by 2025.

Poland is being considered as the primary location for the European expansion. SK Nexilis aims to quickly complete investment condition negotiations with the Polish government and finalize the expansion site. Poland offers excellent customer accessibility, with four major global secondary battery manufacturers located in Poland or neighboring countries. Additionally, available land sites are often larger than the Malaysian plant site, providing good scalability.

Notably, large-scale electricity required for copper foil manufacturing can be secured through renewable energy, enabling full compliance with RE100 (a campaign to use 100% renewable energy). SKC, which became the first in the industry to implement RE100 at its Malaysian plant, has announced it will continue to comply with RE100 in subsequent investments. If RE100 is fully implemented at the European plant, the overall RE100 compliance level of SKC's copper foil business will rise to 70%.

Once the investment location is finalized, SK Nexilis will immediately begin preliminary preparations such as design and permits. The goal is to start construction this year and complete it by 2024. This will bring SKC's total copper foil production capacity to 152,000 tons.

SK Nexilis is accelerating expansion due to demand growing faster than expected. According to SNE Research, the electric vehicle battery market is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 38% until 2025. Accordingly, SK Nexilis's Jeongeup plant has been operating at full capacity since last year. To expand supply, the commercial operation of the 5th plant, originally scheduled for early next year, has been advanced by about six months. The 6th plant under construction is also planned to start commercial operation earlier.

An SKC official said, "SK Nexilis, boasting the world's best technology in copper foil manufacturing for batteries, will expand production capacity to over 200,000 tons by 2025, becoming global No.1 in both technology and production capacity," adding, "We are also considering adding an additional 50,000 tons of production capacity to establish a 250,000-ton system by 2025."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.