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Entek Manufacturing has opened a new US manufacturing and engineering facility as part of the lead-acid and lithium-ion separator firm’s expansion.

The 98,000 square foot building in Henderson, Nevada, will be home to the wear parts production, fabrication and assembly, and engineering sectors of the business.

The expansion is to “better meet the needs of customers’ growing businesses”.

Kimberly Medford, the company’s president, said Entek was investing more than $10 million in new equipment for the Nevada facility and would begin interviewing and hiring new staff immediately.  

Entek chose Nevada for the new facility because it is a growing area of the country with a strong labour market.

Medford said: “We used an outside firm to do a multi-city survey, and the greater Las Vegas metro area came out first when it came to the availability of skilled labour such as machinists and engineers.

“It’s a good location for us, and not far from our headquarters in Oregon.” 

Last month, Entek International completed the acquisition of the majority stake of Japanese Nippon Sheet Glass’ (NSG) lead-acid battery separator business.

Read more about the deal and Entek’s expansion goals in the latest edition of BEST HERE

Battery separator firm Entek has signed a deal to acquire the majority stake in Nippon Sheet Glass’ (NSG) lead-acid battery separator business.

The buy-out combines US firm Entek’s core know-how in material science, equipment engineering and design, along with capital, to fund future growth with NSG Group’s leadership and customer focus.

Both companies have executed the relevant agreements and plan to complete the deal in August 2021— subject to laws and regulations in the relevant jurisdictions, including NSG’ home country Japan.

NSG will hold a minority stake in— although actual percentages are not being disclosed— and appoint a director to the board of the battery separator business (BSS).

The new BSS company will own all battery separator manufacturing facilities in Japan and China for both polyethylene (PE) separator and absorbent glass mat (AGM).  

The acquisition gives Entek more than 400 million square metres of aggregate PE separator production capacity (from its sites in the US, UK, Indonesia and Japan) to support its lead-acid battery market.

That figure does not include AGM capacity (Japan and China) or the firm’s lithium separator capacity in the US, the company’s VP of global sales, Clint Beutelschies, told BEST.

The deal was made when NSG decided the best option for the BSS business was for it to be integrated with, and managed by, Entek so that it could “develop further and enhance its value for its customers”.

NSG has supplied battery separators for lead-acid batteries mainly in Asia, including manufacturing footprints in China and a strong market position in Japan.

The firms are joint venture partners in the Entek NSG Separindo PE manufacturing plant in Indonesia, on which they broke ground in 2019.

In 2019, Entek announced plans to double the capacity of the Indonesian plant to 90 million square metres by the close of this year.

Japanese firm Asahi Kasei has won a two-year lithium-ion separator patent infringement case against firms Shenzhen Xu Ran (旭冉) Electronic and Shenzhen Xu Ran (旭然) Electronic.

Asahi filed a patent infringement lawsuit based on the Chinese patent of separator for lithium-ion secondary battery (Patent No.: ZL200680046997. 8) with the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court in August, 2018.

SK Innovation Co is expanding its lithium-ion battery separator manufacturing facility in China.

The energy solutions arm of South Korean conglomerate SK Group is ramping up output of the battery product in Jeungpyeong, North Chungcheong. Ground-breaking is set for May.