Thursday, August 22nd, 2013
LG Chem president Kwon Young-soo said, "With the latest agreement we succeeded in entering the Japanese market, the world's No. 1 market for rechargeable batteries. We will keep developing overseas markets for UPS systems."
The company will supply seven lithium-ion battery modules for each UPS. The total battery electric power to be provided to Softbank Mobile will be about 20 megawatt-hours. An LG Chem official said, "This is the first occasion for any Korean supplier to deliver a large amount of batteries to Japan, except on an experimental basis."
LG Chem expects that its exports of lithium-ion batteries to other Japanese mobile operators such as NTT DoCoMo would rise as the companies plan to replace legacy lead-based UPS units with lithium-ion ones. The Japanese UPS market is estimated at about US$804 million, while the global market is valued at approximately $8 billion.