SK Innovation announced that it has begun construction of a high-tech electric vehicle battery production plant in the Gumtan Economic Development District in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, through a joint venture with Chinese partners such as Beijing Motor Co. and Beijing Electric Company.
Although domestic and foreign electric vehicle battery makers operate production plants in China, this is the first time that Chinese car manufacturers build a battery-making plant jointly with Chinese car manufacturers and foreign battery makers.
The new plant will be constructed with 7.5GWh, which is equivalent to 250,000 electric vehicles per year, at a site of about 300,000 square meters. *Standard 30KWh electric vehicle battery standard
SK Innovation invested a total of 1 billion yuan in 2013 and established 'BESK', which is a JV (Electric Vehicle Battery' joint venture, along with Beijing Motor Company and Beijing Electric Company. The joint venture built a battery pack line at its Beijing plant.
BESK is a 100% subsidiary of BESK and its mission is called BEST. The company is planning to invest about 5 billion yuan (about 820 billion won) in construction investment and driver's copy in the form of a split investment by 2020.
Based on experiences in mass-production such as operating battery plants, it will be constructed as a state-of-the-art facility that can reflect current battery production technologies and Smart Factory applied to second Seosan Plant.
SK Innovation is planning to complete construction of its facilities in second half of 2019 and start mass-producing and supplying its facilities from early 2020 after going through process such as stabilizing and commissioning of facilities and certification of products. Once the Chinese and Hungarian battery plants are completed in 2022, annual production of the SK Innovation battery business will be around 20GWh.
SK Innovation President Kim Joon said that SK Innovation will actively establish production bases in major global markets such as Europe and China in order to secure competitive edge in battery business based on Deep Change 2.0.