Posco Future M seeks to take world's No. 1 cathode plant to new heights

The company's Gwangyang plant is producing the EV battery material at record rates for the likes of General Motors, Samsung and LG, producing enough cathode for around 1 million EVs.

Kim Dae-wan, vice head manager of Posco Future M’s Gwangyang plant, explains the company’s smart factory technologies at the plant in South Jeolla on Thursday. [POSCO FUTURE M]

GWANGYANG, South Jeolla — Wearing shoe covers and getting an air shower before stepping into Posco Future M’s cathode plant in Gwangyang, South Jeolla are extremely strict measures to prevent any foreign substances from disturbing the process.

Around 2,000 CCTVs installed with artificial intelligence systems are placed everywhere in the factory, the world’s largest cathode plant, to produce around 10 tons of cathodes per hour. The cathode is one of the four major materials for EV batteries, accounting for 40 percent of the battery's cost.

“Ingredients for cathodes are very sensitive to foreign substances, so we always pay particular caution for it,” said Kim Dae-wan, vice head manager of the No. 2 plant, during a media tour on Thursday.

“We produce single-crystal cathodes at this plant, which requires more heat and complex procedures to allow it to have a longer life span and larger capacity.”

The plant on a 165,000-square-meter site has a total of 90,000 tons of annual production capacity, enough to make batteries for around 1 million EVs.

A massive machine was making prodigious noise and smoke, where boxes of black powder, a combination of precursor and lithium, were sintered at over 700 degrees Celsius (1,292 degrees Fahrenheit).

Kim Dae-wan, vice head manager of Posco Future M’s Gwangyang plant, explains the sintering process of cathodes in South Jeolla on Thursday. [POSCO FUTURE M]

The produced cathode is then delivered to a quality control room where workers can take samples to analyze the details of components such as size, ingredients and foreign substances.

The Gwangyang plant has a total of twelve 1-kilometer-long Air Shooting pipelines that send samples from place to place at a speed of 5 meters per second (11 miles per hour). When any errors or defective products are detected, it alarms workers to stop the process and change the materials.

“Around 300 samples are being analyzed per day, and they can be delivered in less than 1 minute through the pipeline,” Kim said.

A 20-meter-tall storage unit can store up to 11,857 tons of cathodes and run automatically with robots at the plant in Gwangyang. [POSCO FUTURE M]

The media tour then continued to storage where products were preserved, and not a single worker was seen. Only robots are placed there to carry and deliver products.

The 20-meter-tall storage units can store up to 11,857 tons of cathodes.

Around 300 employees work at the Gwangyang plant.

Posco Future M produces NCMA (nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum) cathodes for Ultium Cells, a 50:50 joint battery venture between LG Energy Solution and General Motors, as well as nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) cathodes for Samsung SDI.

Its total cathode capacity amounts to 155,000 tons as of now, and it aims to boost its capacity to 1 million tons in 2030.

The company currently has another 90,000-ton facility in Gwangyang, a 30,000-ton factory in Pohang, a 10,000-ton facility in Gumi, North Gyeongsang, and a 25,000-ton facility in China, and is building a 30,000-ton cathode plant in Quebec, Canada with General Motors and another 10,000-ton plant in Zhejiang, China in a joint venture with Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.

Posco Future M has landed 106 trillion won ($80 billion) worth of orders so far from various major battery makers including Samsung SDI, LG Energy Solution, and Ultium Cells.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]