S.Korea's SK On to invest $2.5 billion to build new EV battery factory in China -govt media

SEOUL (Reuters) - The battery unit of South Korea's SK Innovation Co Ltd plans to invest $2.53 billion to build a new electric vehicle (EV) battery factory in China, China's local government backed Yancheng News reported on Thursday.

SK Innovation's wholly-owned battery subsidiary SK On, which supplies electric car batteries to Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen and Hyundai Motor Co among others, has battery production sites in the United States, Hungary, China and South Korea.

The company had said in September it planned to build a new battery factory in China with an initial investment of 1.2 trillion won ($1.01 billion) https://www.reuters.com/article/ctech-us-sk-innovation-battery-china-idCAKBN2FX2Z4-OCATC.

"SK On has been building (battery) factories in the United States, China and Hungary as a growth strategy after securing battery orders in the global market," SK On said in a statement.

SK On said last week that it has an order backlog of about 1.6 terawatt hours (TWh) of batteries worth about 220 trillion won, which could power about 23 million electric vehicles.

($1 = 1,183.4000 won)

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Brenda Goh; Editing by Kim Coghill)