SK Innovation builds its third electric vehicle battery plant in Hungary. SK Innovation’s battery business surpassed KRW 1 trillion in sales for the first time last year, but the petroleum business, its flagship business, was sluggish, resulting in a deficit of over 2.5 trillion KRW.
SK Innovation announced on the 29th that it will invest 1.267 trillion won in its Hungarian subsidiary to invest in the electric vehicle battery plant. The day before, the board of directors decided on an investment plan. The industry predicts that SK Innovation’s third plant in Europe will have a production capacity of more than 12 GWh (gigawatt hours), far exceeding the existing plant. Currently, SK Innovation is operating in Korea’s Seosan (4.7GWh) and Hungary’s first plant (7.5GWh). Plants in Yancheng and Huizhou in China, and Georgia in the US are also scheduled to enter commercial production sequentially.
SK Innovation announced that it recorded sales of 34.16 trillion won and an operating loss of 2.568.8 billion won last year. Due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection (Corona 19), oil demand declined, and the main business, the petroleum business, had an operating loss of KRW 2,222.8 billion. It is 86.5% of the total deficit.
The battery business surpassed 1 trillion won for the first time with sales of 1.61 trillion won. It has more than doubled its sales in 2019 (69.03 billion won). However, it incurred an operating loss of 4265 billion won, including initial costs in the process of building an overseas factory. In a conference call (telephone conference) held after the performance announcement last year, SK Innovation explained, “We will expand our production capacity to 125GWh per year by 2025.” “The third plant in Hungary plans to start commercial production in 2024.” Reporter Hong Seok-ho will @donga.com
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