Ener1 buys majority stake in South Korea's Enertech

New York-based Ener1 (Amex: HEV) announced today that it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Seoul, South Korea's Enertech International, a lithium-ion battery cell producer.

Ener1, a developer of batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles, said it will buy an 83 percent stake in Enertech from a private equity fund for 5 million shares of Ener1 common stock, 2.56 million warrants and $600,000 in cash.

"Enertech is one of the largest lithium-ion battery producers in Korea, behind only LG Chemical and Samsung," said Charles Gassenheimer, CEO of Ener1, in a statement.

"This acquisition gives us immediate scale and volume manufacturing ability, as well as an important beachhead for supplying Asian car makers that plan to use lithium-ion technology in their electric drive vehicles."

Gassenheimer said he believes the acquisition will provide immediate synergies, and add valuable expertise from Enertech's engineering team to help accelerate expansion of Ener1's Indiana plant.

Ener1 recently acquired full ownership of its lithium-ion operations in Indiana, grabbing the remaining stake in Indianapolis-based EnerDel that it didn't already own from Troy, Mich.'s Delphi, which has been in bankruptcy protection since 2005 (see Ener1 buys full ownership of EnerDel).

Enertech, formerly part of the Saehan Group, operates a 200,000 square foot plant outside of Seoul that Ener1 said is capable of producing cells for 15,000 electric vehicle battery packs per year. Enertech has also worked with EnerDel to supply cells for prototype and preproduction systems for Norway's Think Global.

In June, Ener1 announced that EnerDel and Think Global successfully demonstrated an operational battery pack in a Think City electric vehicle (see Ener1, Think demonstrate operational battery pack).

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