SKIET President Kim Cheol-jung Visits Global Production Sites Consecutively

Visit to Poland Production Plant from 10th to 13th
Inspection of Production Facilities and Meeting with Local Government Officials

Kim Cheol-jung, President of SK IE Technology (SKIET), will visit the lithium-ion battery separator (LiBS) production site located in Poland. President Kim has been actively moving to secure a competitive edge in the separator business by consecutively visiting production plants in Chungbuk Jeungpyeong, Changzhou in China, and now Poland.

SKIET announced on the 13th that President Kim visited Poland from the 10th to 13th (local time), inspected the separator production plant located in the Silesian Voivodeship, and met with local government officials to discuss cooperation plans.

SK IE Technology President Kim Cheol-jung (center) visited the SK IE Technology Poland subsidiary's separator production plant on the 11th (local time) to inspect the production process of lithium-ion battery separators (LiBS) for electric vehicles. Photo by SK IE Technology

As his first schedule, President Kim visited SKIET Poland Plant 1. Plant 1 was completed in 2021 and is the first separator factory in Europe capable of producing approximately 340 million square meters of separators annually. President Kim conducted on-site management by inspecting the production line and communicating with local expatriates working there through a meeting.

He also visited Plants 2 to 4, where expansion work is underway, to check the construction status. Plant 2 is scheduled to enter equipment stabilization and trial operation in the second half of this year, with commercial operation planned to start as early as the end of this year. Plants 3 and 4 are currently undergoing site preparation and steel frame construction, with completion expected in 2024. Once Plant 4 begins operation, it will produce 1.54 billion square meters of separators, the largest scale in Europe. This production volume corresponds to separators used in batteries for approximately 2.05 million electric vehicles.

During his visit to the local plant, President Kim emphasized, "The Poland plant aims to target the European market but can also serve as an advanced base to proactively respond to demand in the North American region. It is necessary to thoroughly prepare by actively establishing a 'smart factory' including automation to secure a competitive advantage."

Currently, SKIET’s Poland plant is equipped with separator packaging and transportation automation facilities, and plans to automate the entire process from production to packaging and transportation in the future. They are also promoting the use of AI technology to predict problems occurring during production and to identify product defects. This is expected to drastically reduce manufacturing costs.

He also discussed cooperation plans with local officials. President Kim met with Marcin Bazylak, Mayor of D?browa G?rnicza, and agreed to continue mutual cooperation to make SKIET the leading separator company in the European region. He also met with Janusz Mihavek, CEO of the Katowice Special Economic Zone, to exchange opinions on various support measures.

President Kim stated, "The core competencies that determine SKIET’s future growth are technology, cost, global supply chain, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) management, through which we must provide integrated value to customers. We will continuously strive to ensure that the Poland production base is equipped with core competencies in advance and becomes SKIET’s global central hub."

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