OREANDA-NEWS. February 08, 2011. Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. is establishing a new company for manufacturing and selling electrodeposited copper foil for Lithium-ion batteries ("copper foil for batteries") in Taiwan, in March this year. The amount of the investment is 6.9 billion yen, the production capacity is 500 tons/month, and operations are scheduled to start in September 2012.

Production capacity for the copper foil for batteries at Imaichi Plant will almost double, to about 1,000 tons/month by March 2012, up from the current 550 tons/month.
This makes our production capacity for copper foil for batteries as of July 2013 1,500 tons/month, with a target of achieving an overwhelming market position with a global share of 60%.


Background

Electrodeposited copper foil manufactured by Furukawa Electric for Lithium-ion batteries has attained a global share of more than 40%, the highest in the world.
The Company has already started delivering the product to major automobile manufacturers ahead of any of its competitors, for use with the automotive batteries of Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) and Electric Vehicles (EV).
In addition to batteries for consumer products such as mobile phones and notebook computers, demand for batteries for automobiles are expected to surge, in line with the rapid dissemination of HEV and EV. (See attached diagram.) There is an urgent need to expand production of electrodeposited copper foil, the major component.