Employees of L&F Plus pose for a commemorative photo at a ceremony marking the first shipment of trial production units. [L&F Plus]
Employees of L&F Plus pose for a commemorative photo at a ceremony marking the first shipment of trial production units. [L&F Plus]

Battery materials maker L&F said Monday that its wholly owned subsidiary L&F Plus made the first shipment of trial output from South Korea's first lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode mass-production line on Friday.

The shipment consists of products generated during the ramp-up phase of the production line — a period focused on stabilizing output and expanding capacity. The trial units will undergo customer evaluation and quality verification before the company moves to full-scale mass production and supply.

L&F Plus is a wholly owned subsidiary dedicated to producing and selling L&F's LFP cathode materials. Its LFP-dedicated factory, built on a roughly 100,000-square-meter site within the Daegu Dalseong-gun national industrial complex at a total investment of 338 billion won ($236 million), was completed in May.

That same month, the company secured 220 billion won in long-term, low-interest financing — a 12-year loan from the National Growth Fund — to support the buildout of its mass-production system. Since the factory's completion, L&F Plus has carried out equipment commissioning, process optimization, and production stabilization in stages. With the first trial shipment now complete, the company plans to proceed through customer evaluation and further process stabilization before launching full mass production by the end of the third quarter.

L&F has been diversifying its customer portfolio, having signed a mid-to-long-term LFP cathode supply agreement with Samsung SDI worth about 1.6 trillion won in March and more recently concluding a separate supply deal with US battery firm Coreshell Technologies. The company expects the trial shipment to serve as a foundation for product evaluation by individual customers and for establishing a full mass-production and supply framework.

With more than 90 percent of the global LFP supply chain concentrated in China, L&F says it intends to get ahead of growing demand for LFP cathode supply chains outside China. L&F Plus is targeting the launch of mass production at an annual capacity of 30,000 tons by the end of the third quarter, while pursuing production stabilization and customer quality verification. It then plans to expand capacity in stages to 60,000 tons per year by the first half of 2027, in line with growth in the North American energy storage system market and customer demand.

The trial products are a third-generation high-density LFP cathode material developed to achieve higher energy density than conventional LFP. L&F Plus aims to develop products with a powder density of 2.50 g/cc or above, addressing the relatively low energy density of standard LFP while targeting the high-value-added LFP market on both price and performance. The company also plans to expand applications from grid-scale energy storage systems to ESS for AI data centers and entry-level electric vehicles.

"This first trial shipment is a meaningful starting point for stabilizing production on South Korea's first LFP cathode mass-production line and preparing for full-scale output," L&F CEO Heo Je-hong said. "We will respond without disruption to customer evaluation and quality verification, and steadily build out our mass-production system."

He added that the company would "continue to expand our presence in the global market by strengthening the competitiveness of the non-China LFP supply chain, while addressing diverse demand in the EV and ESS markets through a two-track strategy encompassing both LFP and high-nickel NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese)."

L&F recently signed a mid-to-long-term supply agreement with US battery technology firm Coreshell Technologies covering LFP cathode materials.

Coreshell is a California-based battery technology company developing a next-generation battery platform using American-made metallurgical silicon. The company has been conducting technology validation and sample supply activities targeting global automotive OEMs, and is expanding into electric vehicles, grid-scale energy storage and defense.


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