SK ie technology to use Poland plant to advance into North America

A worker of SK ie technology Co. inspects the separators. [Photo provided by SK innovation]

SK ie technology Co. (SKIET), a lithium-ion battery separator (LiBS) company, sees its Polish subsidiary as a stepping stone for North American expansion as it will take some time should it decide to set up a production base in the region to take advantage of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

According to the detailed IRA guidelines, in order to receive electric vehicle subsidy benefits, 100 percent of the separators must be produced or assembled in North America from 2029 onwards. Even if a decision is made to establish a factory in the North American region, it will take three to four years to reach actual production, so SKIET plans to respond to U.S. demand through its Polish subsidiary until then.

SKIET’s plant is located in Dabrowa Gornicza, about 300 kilometers southwest of Warsaw. The factory is a site of approximately 570,000 square meters, equivalent to about 80 times the size of a soccer field.

The annual production capacity for separators at Plant 1, completed in 2021, is 340 million square meters, the largest in Europe. SKIET plans to complete and operate Plants 3 and 4, including the currently undergoing test runs in Plant 2, by 2024. With all four plants in operation, they will be able to produce a total of 1.54 billion square meters of separators annually. This quantity can supply batteries for approximately 2.05 million medium-sized electric vehicles and meet 30 percent of Europe‘s separator demand in 2025.

Park Byoung-chul, the head of SKIET Poland, said, “To win in the competition, it is important to have price competitiveness and reduce the manufacturing cost per unit.”

In order to keep up with the rapidly growing electric vehicle market, the competition in the battery separator market has become fierce, not just for batteries. While SKIET has taken the top spot in the wet separator market, major companies such as Asahi Kasei Corp. and Toray Industries Inc. in Japan and Semcorp Group in China, are intensifying the competition. In South Korea, LG Chem Ltd. has a joint venture with Toray in Hungary.

The reason SKIET chose Poland is attributed to the support of the Polish government. The Polish government is attracting companies by offering benefits, such as exempting corporate taxes equivalent to 25-50 percent of the investment amount in the Katowice Special Economic Zone where Dabrowa Gornicza sits in.

In the first floor of the production line inside the currently operating Plant 1, most of the production equipment was automated, minimizing the involvement of employees. Over 30 automated logistics devices called overhead hoist transport (OHT), which transport along rails on the ceiling, were busy moving the produced separators to the warehouse.

The separator was thin like oil paper and slightly crinkled. Although it appeared easy to make at first glance, the separator is a product with high technological barriers. The separator blocks the contact between the positive and negative electrodes of a lithium-ion battery and allows the lithium ions to pass through nanometer-sized pores, enabling the battery to function. The higher the durability of the separator, the safer it is from fires, and the longer the battery life.

The production of separators proceeded by manufacturing the material and applying ceramic coated separator (CCS) technology to enhance safety. The material is made by mixing polyethylene (PE) powder and raw materials such as oil. After extrusion, the oil components are removed, heat is applied to prevent deformation, and the material is rolled up like a roll of toilet paper. In the final stage, ceramic coating is applied to prevent battery performance degradation.

SKIET is famous for commercializing the “sequential stretching” process, which sequentially expands the separator in both horizontal and vertical directions, making it the first in the world to do so. Through this process, SKIET has been producing customized separators for customers.