NIPPON SHOKUBAI CO., LTD. aims to expand the LiFSI business in China, the biggest market of lithium-ion batteries (hereinafter “LIB”). Company hereby announce that, as part of this business expansion, company have reached agreement on investment in Hunan Fluopont New Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Hunan Fluopont”), a subsidiary of Shenzhen CAPCHEM Technology Co. Ltd. (hereinafter “Capchem”), who is currently making efforts to establish production facilities to enter LiFSI business.

Lithium bis (fluorosulfonyl) imide (Product name: IONEL™), a lithium salt as the advanced electrolyte which was commercialized first in the world by Nippon Shokubai. With a rising awareness of environmental issues in recent years, there is a high demand for electric vehicle (EV), which is an industry-leading product of energy-saving and low-pollution next-generation vehicles, and this has led to the rapid expansion of the LIB market for EV. Because using LiFSI as an electrolyte in LIB for EV significantly improves the battery's cyclic and rate performance as well as storing stability over a wide temperature range from low to high temperatures, LiFSI has been adapted not only as an additive, but also as a main ingredient of the electrolyte.

As this has led to a surge in LiFSI demand particularly in Asia and Europe, early business expansion to China, the world's biggest LIB market for vehicles has been a key for company to make a big leap in company IONEL™ business. Under these circumstances, in order to acquire high-profile customers and early establish a cost-competitive manufacturing and sales structure in China with the largest LIB demand, company have decided to form an alliance with Capchem, a major electrolyte solution manufacturer, and Toyota Tsusho Corporation (Headquarters: Nagoya, Japan, President: Ichiro Kashitani, hereinafter “Toyota Tsusho”), who is Toyota Group's general trading company. The investment will be made by Toyota Tsusho (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Toyotsu Shanghai”).

This will allow company to combine company state-of-the-art LiFSI production technologies, quality control capability, and intellectual properties with Hunan Fluopont's cost-competitiveness, location, material procurement capability, production system, and existing technologies, and Capchem's LiFSI purchasing capability supported by their top-level supply capacity of electrolyte solutions, as companyll as Toyota Tsusho's world-wide sales network encompassing China. Through this alliance, company will aim to accelerate company IONEL™ business in the electrolyte market. LiFSI is known as a difficult substance to purify to a high degree, which is only achieved by advanced know-how for its production and quality management.

Using company unique production technology that company have nurtured over the years, in 2013, company succeeded in the development of an industrial production process of highly-pure LiFSI with few solvents and by-products, exhibiting stable electrochemical properties, for the first time in the world. Company product has been adopted and certified as the electrolyte by many LIB manufacturers inside and outside Japan with a wide variety of applications including vehicle, consumer-use, and stationary batteries.