South Korea’s Lotte Aluminium, jointly investing with Lotte Chemical, will build an aluminum foil production plant in Hardin County, Kentucky, to produce cathode foils used in electric vehicle batteries.

The investment in the joint venture of the two companies totaled US$238.7 million, which was scheduled to be put into operation in 2025 and create 122 jobs.

The annual capacity of this new plant will be 36,000 tons of cathode foil, an ultra-thin aluminum foil as a core material for manufacturing electric vehicle batteries.

Lotte Aluminium expected the annual demand for cathode foils to grow by 32% by 2030.