Recently, foreign media reported that BMZ Group, Europe's largest lithium-ion battery system manufacturer, would purchase 1 trillion won (about 6.1 billion yuan) worth of batteries from Samsung SDI in over the next five years.
BMZ Group CEO and founder Sven Bauer and Samsung SDI Senior Vice President Michael Son had already started relevant negotiations in South Korea in early December 2018.
A Samsung SDI executive said that the company has been cooperating with BMZ Group for a long time and the two parties are currently negotiating future battery supply cooperation, but the size of the transaction has not yet been determined.
Information shows that BMZ Group is a global lithium-ion battery solutions provider headquartered in Germany, with production bases in China, Poland and in the United States, as well asu in Japan and offices in France. In addition, the BMZ Group also has R&D centers around the world.
Since 1994, BMZ Group has provided professional customized battery system solutions to more than 2,000 world-renowned enterprises, covering power batteries, storage systems energy, medical and industrial equipment, electrical tools. and other application areas. Products include: electric vehicles, battery-powered bicycles (E-Bike), ESS energy storage systems, mobile medical equipment, power tools, cordless drills, electric screwdrivers, electric gardening tools , etc.
It is worth mentioning that BMZ Group plans to double the production of electric vehicle battery systems supplied to major European automobile manufacturers next year to further meet the demand of the market. Acquired German battery manufacturer TerraE plans to invest 300 million euros to build an 8 GWh battery production line. The production capacity of the first phase is expected to be 4 GWh and is expected to be put into production in 2020.
As the world's leading power battery industry giant , Samsung SDI has achieved outstanding performance in market cooperation performance, production capacity expansion and technological progress since this year.
Financial data shows that Samsung SDI's sales in the second quarter of this year were 2.25 trillion won and its operating profit was 152 .8 billion won, an increase of about 28 times over the same period. last year (the second quarter of 2017). In the first quarter, Samsung SDI's operating profit was only 5.5 milbillion won, when the company posted six consecutive quarters of losses due to the fallout from the Galaxy Note 7 battery explosion crisis in 2016). Among them, battery sector sales amounted to 1.73 trillion won, an increase of 21.9 percent from the previous quarter.
In terms of business cooperation, in October, Korean media reported that South Korean Hyundai Motor Group planned to cooperate with Samsung SDI to develop electric vehicle batteries. In September, it was announced that Samsung SDI would supply cylindrical batteries to Jaguar Land Rover's electric vehicles. It should initially be available 5 GWh of batteries per year. In March, Webasto and Samsung SDI signed a letter of intent for cooperation at Webasto headquarters in Stockdorf, Munich, and plan to cooperate in the manufacturing of high-voltage batteries for commercial vehicles.
In terms of production capacity expansion, in November this year, Samsung SDI plans to open a $62.7 million automotive battery factory near Detroit, Michigan. The plant will serve as Samsung SDI America's battery pack manufacturing facility, R&D center and headquarters for automotive battery operations.
In December, the new second-phase factory project of Samsung Ring New Power Battery, a Chinese subsidiary of Samsung SDI, started in Xi'an, with full investment of 10.5 billion yuan and a construction zone. of 160,000 square meters, after the project is completed, five 60 Ah lithium-ion battery production lines will be formed.
In the same month, Samsung plans to invest another $2.4 billion (about RMB 16.5 billion) in the Tianjin factory to build the world's first power battery production lineof and an automotive MLCC. (multilayer ceramic capacitor) and other new projects.
In terms of technological progress, the current energy density of Samsung SDI third generation power battery is 550 Wh/L, and mass production has been achieved . According to Samsung SDI's plan, the energy density of 3.5th generation batteries expected to be mass-produced in 2019 can reach 630 Wh/L.
At the same time, Samsung SDI is also accelerating the research and development of fourth-generation batteries and fifth-generation batteries, with energy densities reaching 700 Wh/L ( equivalent to 270 -280Wh/kg) respectively and 800Wh/L (equivalent to 300wh/kg), which are expected to be mass-produced around 2021~2022 and after 2023 respectively.
It can be seen that the meteoric expansion of Samsung SDI is the epitome of the accelerated global expansion of power batteries.Korean births. Currently, electric battery giants, including LG Chem and SKI, are also accelerating the distribution of their production capacities in the European, American and Chinese markets. Under the new energy globalization and the timing of subsidy withdrawal in 2020, Chinese electric battery companies are bound to face global competition. How to deal with the close combat of Japanese and Korean electric battery giants has become a problem for Chinese companies at present. we have to face it.