Battery plant construction begins in Komárom

Construction works have been launched for South Korea’s third largest company SK Innovation to build a plant manufacturing batteries for use in electric cars in the industrial park in Komárom with an investment worth HUF 97.5 billion.

According to the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, who spoke at the ceremony launching the construction works, the factory will create 410 jobs in the first phase of its capacity. The Hungarian government pays towards the project HUF 8.17 billion, that is over 8% of the costs, as a non-repayable grant.

The Hungarian news agency MTI quotes Yoon Ye-sun, chief of SK Innovation’s Battery and Information/Electronics Division, as saying that the plant, whose construction was announced in November 2017. will operate on a floor space of 430,000 square meters. SK Battery Hungary will produce state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries for fully electric, plug-in and hybrid vehicles, on two production lines. They will start mass production in 2020 when the capacity of the batteries manufactured will be around 7.5GWh, able to serve 250,000 cars. They will launch the second phase of construction subject to their order portfolio, and its capacity will be equal to that of the first. The company already has a battery plant using effectively the same technology in the city of Seosan in South Korea.

The company is seeking to break into the European market with its project in Komárom. At the ceremony organized to mark the launch of the construction works the representatives of BMW, Daimler-Benz, Ferrari, Hyundai and Renault were greeted specifically. With the appearance of SK Innovation, three South Korean companies will be making batteries for electric cars in Central and Eastern Europe. LG Chem will open a plant in Poland in 2018; this is an investment worth more than HUF 400 million. Samsung SDI recently opened its plant in Göd which was built from an investment of HUF 100 billion and employs 600 people.