LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo.

LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo’s efforts to nurture a secondary battery business have come a long way.

Looking back at 1991, LG Group Chairman Koo, then group vice chairman, made a business trip to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in which he watched the development of a secondary battery. Recognizing the secondary battery as the group’s future new growth engine, he brought a sample of the rechargeable battery and told his R&D staff to research secondary batteries. 

Fast forward two decades and LG Chem, a chemical unit of LG Group, has made a splash in the global rechargeable market. The company has dedicated a plant capable of producing 50,000 units in Nanjing, China, which is emerging as the world’s largest secondary battery market. LG Chem set up a trilateral production format following the dedication of a plant in Ochang, Chungcheongbuk-do, in 2011 and another in Holland, Michigan, in 2012. 

LG Group executives, including LG Group Chairman Koo, LG Electronics Vice Chairman Koo Bon-joon, LG Chem Vice Chairman Park Jin-soo, and LG Corp. President Ha Hyun-hoe, participated in a ceremony to officially dedicate the rechargeable battery plant in Nanjing on Oct. 27. 

The latest plant is capable of producing secondary batteries for more than 50,000 electric cars traveling more than 320 km or for 180,000 plug-in hybrid electric cars (PHEVs) annually. Production will be launched early next year. The plant will bring the combined production capacity along with the Ochang and Holland plants to batteries for 180,000 electric units or 650,000 PHEV cars, the world’s highest. 

Capping the trilateral format by dedicating the latest plant in China, LG Chem has laid a solid groundwork to lead the global EV battery market. The Chinese plant has set up an integrated production system that can produce battery cells to modules and packs, which is tailored to meet customers’ demands in the center of China, emerging as the world’s largest EV market. “We’ll devote ourselves to making the Nanjing plant a global EV battery production center,” said LG Chem President Kwon Young-soo. 

LG Chem has an ambitious plan, calling for expanding the production capacity of EV rechargeable batteries four times to 200,000 EV units or 650,000 PHEV units by 2020 as much as now. The company aims to chalk up 1.5 trillion won in sales annually and account for a 25 percent share in the Chinese rechargeable market by 2020 to solidify its position as the global No. 1 secondary battery maker. 

The company has already secured orders to supply secondary batteries for a combined 1 million EV units from 16 company clients including such juggernauts as China’s biggest automaker Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. Group, runner-up Pongfeng Automotive Industry Corp. Group and others accounting for half of China’s top 10 automakers.    

LG Group Chairman Koo demonstrated his strong determination to nurture the secondary battery business by attending a ceremony to dedicate the Nanjing plant, as he did at a ceremony to launch the Holland plant project in 2010 and the one to dedicate the Ochang plant in 2012. 

Figures released by the global market survey company B3 showed that the value of the global EV battery market is forecast to surge to $18.24 billion (some 20.7 trillion won) in 2020, a over five-fold jump from $3.26 trillion (some 3.7 trillion won) in 2013.

LG Group executives, including LG Group Chairman Koo, LG Electronics Vice Chairman Koo Bon-joon, LG Chem Vice Chairman Park Jin-soo, and LG Corp. President Ha Hyun-hoe, attend a ceremony to officially dedicate the rechargeable battery plant in Nanjing, China, on Oct. 27.(Photos:LG Chem)