Japanese material supplier Nippon Denkai said recently that it will invest $150 million to build a factory in the United States to produce copper foil used in electric vehicle batteries.
The new facility, located in Augusta, Georgia, will begin breaking ground this September. Samples will begin shipping in summer 2024, and the company has set the new plant's capacity at 9,500 tonnes per year.
Nippon Denkai's original plan was to invest 19 billion yen to expand an existing plant in Camden, South Carolina, to increase its production capacity to 9,000 tons per year. However, after considering cost competitiveness and future expansion potential, the company chose to build a new plant in Georgia. The capacity of the new plant may be tripled to 28,500 tons in the future to meet future demand.
Reducing the thickness of copper foil in lithium batteries can extend the cruising range of electric vehicles. Although thinning the copper foil will result in a weaker product, Nippon Denkai copper foil has more than 1.5 times the tensile strength of competing products. Due to the crack resistance of Nippon Denkai's copper foil, its products have achieved a nearly 60% share in Japan's automotive application market in 2020, and its share in North America has also reached a competitive 40%.
