Ube Industries plans to expand production capacity for its UPORE polyolefin multiparous film for lithium-ion battery separators, in order to meet growing demand for automotive batteries.

The expansion project is expected to be completed in April 2018, and will bring the company’s annual production capacity for separators to 250 million square meters. The company plans to increase capacity further, to 300 million square meters, by around 2020.

UPORE has a uniform microporous structure, and comes in either single or multi-layer membranes. It is manufactured using an environmentally friendly dry process (lamellar crystal stretching) that does not use solvents or inorganic fillers.

Ube Industries’ separators are already widely used in automobiles, including the fourth-generation Toyota Prius.

Source: Ube Industries via Green Car Congress