South Korea's SKI builds its third factory in Hungary with a planned production capacity of 30GWh

According to foreign media reports, South Korea's SKI announced on January 29 that it will invest 1.3 trillion won (about 1.16 billion US dollars) to build its third battery factory in Hungary. It is reported that the third battery factory is scheduled to start construction in the third quarter of this year, with a planned capacity of 30GWh of power batteries.

According to Battery China.com, SKI's first battery factory in Hungary has been put into operation, with a designed capacity of 7.5GWh; the second factory is still under construction, with a planned capacity of 9GWh. With the completion and commissioning of the third plant, its power battery plant in Hungary will have a production capacity of 46.5GWh.

According to SKI's plan, its third plant in Hungary is scheduled to be completed and put into operation around 2024, when its delivery capacity to European customers will be greatly improved.

It is understood that the main customers of SKI in Europe are Volkswagen and Ford. At the same time, in South Korea, SKI's major customers are also mainstream car manufacturers such as Hyundai.

Industry data shows that in 2020, SKI's global installed capacity of power batteries is about 7GWh, ranking sixth after CATL, LG New Energy, Panasonic, BYD and Samsung SDI. It is worth noting that SKI's installed capacity of power batteries in 2020 increased by 284% compared with 2019, while the growth rate of several other head battery companies in the same period was relatively small or even slightly decreased.

Along with the surge in its power battery shipments, SKI's battery business sales revenue more than doubled to 1.6 trillion won (about 1.43 billion U.S. dollars) last year.

Like other leading power battery companies, SKI has also been madly deploying production capacity around the world in recent years. In addition to this increase in the production capacity of European factories, SKI has also expanded production capacity in China and the United States in recent years. Among them, SKI's first factory in China has a production capacity of 7.5GWh and was completed and put into operation in 2019. The second factory has a capacity of 27GWh and was completed in 2020. In the US market, SKI's first factory has a designed capacity of 9.8GWh and is expected to be launched in 2022. It was completed and put into production in 2018, and its planned second plant in the United States has also started construction, with a planned production capacity of 11.7GWh.

It can be seen that SKI is actively deploying production capacity around the world. According to SKI's plan, coupled with the production capacity of its local factory in South Korea, SKI's global power battery capacity will reach 85GWh by 2023, and its battery capacity will exceed 125GWh by 2025.