Plants: Asahi Kasei to increase capacity for LIB separator in Japan; SK Global/Zhejiang Satellite to build ethylene acrylic acid plant in China

Japan’s Asahi Kasei says it will increase production capacity for Hipore Li-ion battery (LIB) separator at its plant in Hyuga, Miyazaki, Japan. The 30 billion yen expansion project is scheduled to start up in the first half of fiscal year 2023.

Rapid growth of the LIB market is primarily driven by automotive applications due to increasing demand for electric-drive vehicles. Supplying both wet-process and dry-process separators with its Hipore and Celgard products, Asahi Kasei holds a world-leading position as an LIB separator manufacturer.

Asahi Kasei has been proactively expanding its LIB separator business with wet-process manufacturing plants located in Japan (Moriyama, Shiga, and Hyuga, Miyazaki) and dry-process manufacturing plants located in the US (North Carolina).

Upon completion, this expansion will raise wet-process capacity to 1.35 billion m2/year and total capacity to 1.9 billion m2/year combined with 550 million m2/year in dry-process capacity. In accordance with forthcoming demand trends, Asahi Kasei will continue to increase its LIB separator capacity to meet the growing needs of customers, it added.

In other news, South Korea’s SK Global Chemical, which is an affiliate of SK Innovations, will be teaming up with Satellite Petrochemical, a US firm that is a subsidiary of Zhejiang Satellite Petrochemical Co., to construct an ethylene acrylic acid (EAA) plant in Lianyungang in the province of Jiangsu Province. Once fully operational, the plant will have a capacity of 40,000 tonnes/year of EAA.

Under a memorandum of understanding agreement, the two firms will establish a new joint venture company for the US$176 million project for the production and sales of EAA.

This will be the SK’s third EAA factory overseas. SK already operates similar plants in Spain and the US.

China has been selected as SK stated that there is an increasing demand for EAA-based materials, and China is one of the countries with such high demand. This is because the delivery business in the country is growing fast as well due to the pandemic.

EAA is widely used as an adhesive for packaging materials such as aluminium foil.

Global demand for EAA is expected to increase by about 10,000 tonnes each year, driven by multi-layer packaging and aseptic packaging, which take about 75% of the entire EAA market, according to SK.

China's Zhejiang Satellite produces and sells various acrylic acid applied products such as super absorbent polymer (SAP) and PP.

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(PRA)

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