LG Chem to Supply UPS Battery Modules to Japan's Softbank Mobile

SEOUL, KOREA- LG Chem will supply lithium-ion batteries for use with uninterrupted power supply systems for Softbank Mobile Corp., Japan's second-largest mobile telecommunications service provider. The company said on August 21 that it signed the deal and would deliver the batteries from next month to the end of this year. An uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, is an electrical device that provides emergency power to base stations when the input power fails.

LG Chem president Kwon Young-soo said, "With the latest agreement we succeeded in entering the Japanese market, the world's No. 1 market for rechargeable batteries. We will keep developing overseas markets for UPS systems."

The company will supply seven lithium-ion battery modules for each UPS. The total battery electric power to be provided to Softbank Mobile will be about 20 megawatt-hours. An LG Chem official said, "This is the first occasion for any Korean supplier to deliver a large amount of batteries to Japan, except on an experimental basis."

LG Chem expects that its exports of lithium-ion batteries to other Japanese mobile operators such as NTT DoCoMo would rise as the companies plan to replace legacy lead-based UPS units with lithium-ion ones. The Japanese UPS market is estimated at about US$804 million, while the global market is valued at approximately $8 billion.

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