On December 26, the equipment purchase signing ceremony for Hengli Petrochemical’s wet separator production line was held in Hengli (Suzhou) Industrial Park. According to the agreement, the company’s Kanghui New Materials will introduce a total of 12 wet-process lithium battery separator production lines from Japan’s Shibaura Machinery Co., Ltd. and Qingdao Zhongke Hualian New Materials Co., Ltd., with an annual production capacity of 1.6 billion square meters, marking the formalization of Hengli Petrochemical Entering the field of lithium battery separators and investing in the new chemical energy materials market.
Lithium battery separator is a high value-added material with the highest technical content among lithium battery materials, with a gross profit margin of up to 70%. The performance of the separator directly affects the capacity, cycle and safety performance of lithium batteries, and has extremely high technical barriers. As a domestic private refining and chemical giant, Hengli Petrochemical’s introduction of a lithium battery separator production line will expand the layout of the downstream new energy materials market and significantly alleviate the domestic supply and demand gap for lithium battery separators. With the company’s scale advantages, technological advantages, and R&D advantages in the company’s entire industry chain platform, Hengli Petrochemical’s core competitiveness will continue to increase, and it is moving towards the development direction of a world-class full industry chain petrochemical new materials enterprise.
It is understood that under the background of “dual carbon”, the popularity of new energy and new materials industry continues to rise, and China’s lithium battery separator market is still in a stage of rapid development. According to GGII statistics, China’s lithium battery separator shipments increased by 202% year-on-year in the first half of 2021. According to Shenwan Hongyuan’s calculations, the global demand for lithium battery separators is expected to increase from 6.34 billion square meters to 19.58 billion square meters from 2020 to 2023, with an average annual growth rate of 45.6%, and the market increment is relaxing year by year.
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