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POSCO’s factory for a joint venture in cathode materials – capable of an annual production of 5,000 tons -- in Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province, China. (provided by POSCO)

As tougher environmental regulations have ushered in a new era of electric vehicles, the growth of the battery industry is fueling growth in other industries as companies jump on the battery bandwagon. In particular, businesses whose existent projects have exhausted their growth potential are actively seeking out battery-related industries to pave their future paths.

POSCO provides an illustrative example of such a business. In 2018, POSCO settled on cathode/anode materials -- key components of rechargeable batteries -- as an area for future growth, setting a sales target of 17 trillion won (US$14.01 billion) by 2030. South Korea’s most prominent steel producer is looking to batteries as a source of future opportunities to offset stagnation in the steel sector. In August 2019, POSCO built a factory for a joint venture in cathode materials – capable of an annual production of 5,000 tons -- in Tongxiang, Zhejiang Province, near a production base for Chinese electric vehicle battery manufacturers. This gave it a total domestic and overseas production scale of 20,000 tons, and the company is investing aggressively to increase production to 45,000 tons this year.

To establish a stable source of lithium, POSCO spent US$280 million to acquire lithium salt flats in Argentina; in June 2019, it established a rechargeable battery material research center for its headquarters and affiliates to pursue integrated research into rechargeable battery materials.

Doosan, which has been struggling with plummeting sales in the coal-fired and nuclear power industries, is now moving into the area of battery foil, another material in electric vehicle batteries. The materials company Doosan Solus, which was spun off from Doosan as an independent business in October of last year, secured battery foil source technology with the 2014 acquisition of Circuit Foil in Luxembourg. A thin copper membrane that goes into electric vehicle anode materials, battery foil is directly linked to battery efficiency, as thinner materials can be filled with more lithium ions. Doosan Solus is building a battery foil factory on a 144,000 square meter site in Hungary’s Tatabanya industrial complex -- which is located near Samsung SDI and SK Innovation battery factories -- and plans to begin full-scale mass production by the second half of this year. As the only electric foil factory in Europe, it “established cost competitiveness thanks to the reduced distribution costs, and is highly competitive in terms of quality stability, with the material’s fast oxidation and short lifespan,” Doosan Solus said.

By Kim Eun-hyoung, staff reporter

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