SK Innovation said that it would build a new EV, or electric vehicle secondary battery cell manufacturing facility in China, adding one more to its constellation of existing 3 battery cell factories.

The Korean EV battery cell maker plans to invest US$1.06 billion from Oct. 2021 through Dec. 2024 to construct an EV battery cell factory in Yancheng, China.  

Unlike its 3 existing factories that operate in the joint-ownership with its Chinese partners, the facility will be wholly owned and independently operated.

The facility will also operate on the largest scale ever, producing in excess of terawatt hours, or TWh in the annual capacity.

The company said that we have already secured backlog order of more than 1 terawatt per hours. So, we need more capacity.

The company is now operating 3 battery cell factories in China – one in Changzhou (7GWh), the second in Yancheng (10GWh), and the third in Huizhou (10GWh) – all of which are jointly owned by Chinese partners.

The Changzhou factory is jointly owned by Beijing Automotive Group.

The other two in Yancheng and Huizhou are jointly owned by Chinese EV battery maker EVE.

Meanwhile, SK Innovation plans to split off its EV battery cell business unit as an independent company in October.  The spin-off will start its operation starting from Oct. 1 under in the name SK Battery Inc.

The spin-off is expected to hold IPO or initial public offering to raise investments from the public – its war chest to finance its future business expansion plan.