Separator is one of the four key component in a Li-ion battery; and this year, companies that are involved in the manufacturing of separators and related materials have initiated capacity expansion projects. Qingdao Zhongkehualian New Material, for instance, has just signed an agreement to invest RMB 5 billion in a new base for manufacturing wet separators. Located in Yibin, a city in China’s Sichuan Province, the base will span area of around 270 mu and accommodate 8 production lines for manufacturing wet separators and coating separator films. The production capacity of the base is set at 1.6 billion square meters per year.
Established in November 2011 and headquartered in Qingdao West Coast New Area (China’s Shandong Province), Zhongkehualian develops, manufactures, and sells wet separators and equipment for fabricating high-end porous films. Zhongkehualian is among the world’s top four providers of equipment for fabricating separator films. This group includes Toshiba, Japan Steel Works, and Brückner Group. In China, Zhongkehualian is the first domestic company that offers an in-house developed production line for wet separators.
On April 26, 2021, Zhongkehualian announced that its holding subsidiary Shanxi Lanketu achieved a major technological breakthrough that in turn led to the successful development of a new generation of fabrication process for wet separators. Then, on November 18 of that same year, Zhongkehualian formally introduced its manufacturing solution for high-end wet separators. Furthermore, it released the plan to invest RMB 13 billion to set up 11 bases across China. These bases adopt what the company calls “HQ + production base” model with respect to their layout. Furthermore, they will host a total of 52 new production lines that output “ultra-wide” film products. Also, the 11 proposed bases are estimated to add around 7.5 billion square meters per year of production capacity for wet separators.
On January 3 this year, Zhongkehualian commenced construction on one of these bases. Located in Suining, a city in Sichuan Province, the base will be built by Lanketu in two phases. The first phase is set to comprise four production lines, and the second phase is set to comprise six production lines. According to the official development schedule, the first phase will enter pilot production this September.
This article is a translation of a Chinese article posted by TrendForce. It contains information that is either sourced from other news outlets or accessible in the public domain. Some Chinese names are transcribed into English using Hanyu Pinyin.