LG Chem Acquires New Plant to Expand Its EV Battery Capacity in Poland

To scale up the EV battery production capacity, LG Chem will acquire a home appliances plant near its Wroclaw plant in Poland. It is understood that LG Chem recently signed an agreement with Turkish electronics and electrical appliance manufacturer Vesel. The battery maker intends to acquire its home appliance factory in Breslau, Poland to expand the capacity of its Polish power battery plant and ease the pressure of insufficient battery supply.

According to informed sources, the Turkish home appliances maker Vestel covers an area of 223,000 square meters and the purchase price is about 220 million yuan (31.4 million US dollars). After the completion of the acquisition, the South Korean battery maker will continue to make additional investments to transform the plant into a power battery plant. Currently, the company has a capacity of 15GWh in Poland.

LG Chem image

The battery maker will make an additional investment after the acquisition is completed to change the existing assembly line into battery a production line. The company's existing battery factory in Poland is enough to produce 250,000 units of EVs. LG Chem plans to raise its EV battery production capacity by more than four times by the end of the year.

LG Chem Ltd, often referred to as LG Chemical, is the largest Korean chemical company and is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. It was the 10th largest chemical company in the world by sales in 2017. The company is the only one that is based on the chemical business in the global battery industry. It entered the power battery industry in 2011. With strong chemical material advantages and strong capital strength, the company has become a global soft pack giant. There are five major businesses ran by the battery maker: basic materials, batteries, information electronic materials, and life sciences, etc.

Turkish home appliances maker Vestel image

Currently, the company owns an existing battery capacity of 70GWh and intends to increase its capacity to 100GWh by the end of the year. Last year, the company invested 3.8 trillion won (approximately RMB 22.2 billion) to build factories in the battery field. It plans to invest 3 trillion won (approximately RMB 17.5 billion) this year as well.

According to the statistics of South Korea's SNE Research, the total global lithium-ion power battery shipments in 2019 were 116.6GWh, an increase of 16.6% year-on-year; and LG Chem shipments reached 12.30GWh, an increase of 64.00% year-on-year. Its global market share was 10.55%. The acquirement of the home appliances plant in Poland will also help the company to scale up its EV battery production in Europe.

 

 

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