SK Innovation has signed a large-scale purchase agreement with Ecopro BM to acquire high nickel cathode materials (NCM) worth 10 trillion won ($8.5 billion) from 2024 to 2026, foreign media reported.
Based on the current average selling price, this equates to 110,000 tonnes of NCM per year from Ecopro BM, which can produce 73GWh of batteries, and is expected to supply a total of over 300,000 tonnes of NCM within three years.
Ecopro BM is expected to supply the NCM811 (currently in production) and the NCM9 series (to begin full commercial production in 2022) for eventual use by automakers such as Ford and Volkswagen. The annual value of the new contract is about five times that of the previous one, which was signed in February last year and is worth 2.7 trillion won from 2020 to 2023.
So far, SKI has nine battery plants, including four in China, three in Hungary and two in North America.
