Joint venture for the production of separators for lithium-ion batteries

In Chi­na, Asahi Kasei’s whol­ly owned sub­sidiary Poly­pore Inter­na­tion­al, LP (Poly­pore) and Shang­hai Ener­gy New Mate­ri­als Tech­no-logy Co., Ltd. (SEMCORP), entered into a joint ven­ture Chi­na to pro­duce dry process sep­a­ra­tors. Pro­duc­tion is sched­uled to start in 2022 with a capac­i­ty of 100 mil­lion square meters per year and grad­u­al­ly increase to one bil­lion square meters per year by about 2028. 

Based on a tech­nol­o­gy and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty license valid for polypropy­lene (PP) dry process sep­a­ra­tors from Poly­pore sub­sidiary Cel­gard, LLC, the joint ven­ture plans to man­u­fac­ture and sell high-qual­i­ty sep­a­ra­tor films for lithi­um-ion bat­ter­ies (LIBs) in Chi­na. The sep­a­ra­tors will be used in ener­gy stor­age sys­tems and elec­tric vehi­cles. The agree­ment to estab­lish the joint ven­ture was reached in Jan­u­ary 2021. 

The LIB mar­ket in Chi­na is the world’s largest and grow­ing rapid­ly, with a focus on elec­tric vehi­cle appli­ca­tions. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment is also con­tin­u­ous­ly tak­ing mea­sures to decar­bonize indus­try and soci­ety, so experts expect sig­nif­i­cant fur­ther growth in ener­gy stor­age sys­tems in com­bi­na­tion with renew­able ener­gy. The new­ly estab­lished joint ven­ture is intend­ed to meet the grow­ing demand for dry process sep­a­ra­tors for cor­re­spond­ing stor­age systems. 

The joint ven­ture will lever­age Cel­gar­d’s dry process sep­a­ra­tor pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy, qual­i­ty con­trol exper­tise and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights com­bined with SEM-COR­P’s world-class man­u­fac­tur­ing process and cost capa­bil­i­ties in Chi­na to expand into the Chi­nese LIB mar­ket for ener­gy stor­age applications. 

Cel­gard has been a mar­ket leader in research, devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing for over 40 years since the inven­tion of the dry process LIB sep­a­ra­tor. With man­u­fac­tur­ing exper­tise in thin dry process sep­a­ra­tors that enable high­er ener­gy den­si­ty in high per­for­mance LIBs, Cel­gard has con­sis­tent­ly pro­vid­ed its cus­tomers with tech­no­log­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or sep­a­ra­tors. The com­pa­ny also holds a broad range of patents for coat­ed and uncoat­ed LIB sep­a­ra­tors, in addi­tion to ener­gy stor­age sys­tems used in elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty and con­sumer electronics. 

SEMCORP is Chi­na’s lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of LIB wet sep­a­ra­tors and has more than ten years of expe­ri­ence in man­u­fac­tur­ing and sell­ing wet process sep­a­ra­tors. With six pro­duc­tion sites in Chi­na and a total pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty of 3.5 bil­lion square meters per year, the Group offers more than 100 dif­fer­ent types of sep­a­ra­tors, includ­ing base films and coat­ed mem­branes. The com­pa­ny has had well-known LIB man­u­fac­tur­ers as cus­tomers for many years and con­tin­ues to excel in con­sis­tent qual­i­ty, prof­itabil­i­ty, high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and cost control. 

The joint ven­ture will offer tech­nolo­gies to meet the grow­ing demand for LIB sep­a­ra­tors. It will acquire Cel­gar­d’s dry process mem­brane tech­nol­o­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing know-how and equip­ment under the tech­nol­o­gy license for sin­gle-lay­er PP and coex­trud­ed mul­ti­lay­er PP mem­branes. Pro­duc­tion is sched­uled to start in 2022 with a capac­i­ty of 100 mil­lion square meters per year and grad­u­al­ly increase to one bil­lion square meters per year by about 2028. 

“Com­bin­ing Cel­gar­d’s exper­tise in tech­nol­o­gy, pro­cess­ing and mate­r­i­al sci­ence with SEM­COR­P’s excep­tion­al man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties in Chi­na pro­vides cus­tomers with a wide range of solu­tions on the one hand, and pro­motes the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the LIB indus­try as a whole on the oth­er. I am very excit­ed about this part­ner­ship. The joint ven­ture will pro­vide com­pet­i­tive high-per­for­mance sep­a­ra­tors for LIBs in Chi­na for ener­gy stor­age and mobil­i­ty appli­ca­tions. Com­bin­ing the strengths of both com­pa­nies will enable new solu­tions to glob­al envi­ron­men­tal and ener­gy challenges.”

- Lie Shi

“With this joint ven­ture, we are now seiz­ing the huge oppor­tu­ni­ty in the ener­gy stor­age mar­ket with dry sep­a­ra­tors, just as SEMCORP has seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty in the e‑mobility mar­ket with wet sep­a­ra­tors,” added Chair­man and CEO Paul Xiaom­ing Lee. 

“Cel­gar­d’s cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy and know-how com­bined with SEM-COR­P’s oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in Chi­na, both in mass pro­duc­tion of high-qual­i­ty sep­a­ra­tors and cost com­pet­i­tive­ness, will make this joint ven­ture with Poly­pore a break­through sup­pli­er of dry process sep­a­ra­tors,” Lee continues.