À̹ÌÁö È®´ë A groundbreaking ceremony of SK Innovation EV battery plant in Georgia, the United States, on March 19, 2019. [Photo provided by SK Innovation]
South Korea¡¯s SK Innovation Co. broke ground on a $1.67 billion battery plant in Georgia, its first manufacturing base in the U.S. designed to serve the rapidly growing demand for electric vehicles.
The Korean battery maker held the groundbreaking ceremony on Tuesday (local time) in the city of Commerce, Jackson County, Georgia in the presence of U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and other city and state officials.
This would be SK Innovation¡¯s first electric vehicle battery plant in the U.S. and the biggest single investment deal in the state of Georgia. The company announced it would spend $1.67 billion by 2025 through its local entity, SK Battery America, to produce pouch-type batteries with an annual capacity of 20 gigwatt hours (GWh). The investment would be made in two stages, with about $1 billion to be poured into the first phase by 2021.
À̹ÌÁö È®´ë [Photo provided by SK Innovation]
The new plant is expected to bring 2,000 new jobs by 2022. Depending on the volume of future orders, the company could ramp up the capacity to 50 gigawatt hours (GWh) and has plans to spend a total of $5 billion and employ up to 6,000 workers.
Once completed, the company is expected to become the largest Korean EV battery producer in North America based on production capacity.
In the first-stage investment, SK Innovation plans to start test operations and meet safety certifications at the plant with a goal to start mass production in 2021. Battery packs produced at this stage would be supplied to Volkswagen. The company intends to bolster its client roster to include other auto majors after the second-stage expansion.
With a vast production network stretching across Korea, China, Europe and the U.S., SK Innovation aims to become a leading EV battery maker with 60GWh production capacity by 2022.
By Jang Yong-seung and Kim Hyo-jin
[¨Ï Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]