SKC has cancelled its plan to enter the secondary battery cathode materials business. SKC said on Wednesday it was withdrawing its plan to enter the next-generation cathode materials business by revising its mid- to long-term growth strategy disclosed in September 2021.

At the time, the company announced at its 2021 Investor Day that it would secure core technology through partnerships with global companies and enter the cathode materials market.

But 4 years later it decided to abandon the business. The reason for the change is a prolonged electric vehicle chasm, or a temporary demand slowdown. As demand for electric vehicles continued to slow, investment and production across the secondary battery industry were scaled back. As competition in the global secondary battery value chain intensified, the company said it reviewed long-term profitability and adjusted the investment scale compared with the original plan.

It will pursue the anode materials business through a different approach. The company said it made an equity investment in UK anode materials company Nexeon.

The investment scale was also reduced from the original plan. The company invested a cumulative total of about 4.4 trillion won from 2021 to 2025. That is 600 billion won less than the about 5 trillion won presented at its 2021 Investor Day. The company said some of its business plans changed due to shifts in internal and external management conditions, and it was revising its disclosure.

It will expand its copper foil business as planned. The company said it secured annual production capacity of 125,000 tonnes in 2025 through plants in South Korea, Malaysia and Poland. It said it aims to expand global market share and strengthen technological competitiveness through capacity expansion to provide differentiated customer value.

Its semiconductor materials business is in a restructuring process. The company sold its CMP pad and blank mask businesses as it changed its business plan to focus on semiconductor back-end processing. It will keep its existing plan for its glass substrate business. The company added it built a glass substrate production facility for high-performance computing in Georgia in the United States in 2025 and secured annual production capacity of 12,000 square metres.

It will also proceed with its eco-friendly materials business as planned. The company built a biodegradable plastics ecosystem and commercialised PBAT resin and new materials based on PBAT resin. The company said it operates a production facility with annual capacity of 70,000 tonnes in Haiphong, Vietnam.