L&F Plus, the wholly owned lithium-iron-phosphate cathode unit of Korean battery-materials maker L&F (066970.KQ), has been awarded a ₩220 billion ($160 million) long-term, low-interest policy loan to finish funding the country's first dedicated LFP cathode plant, L&F said on June 4. The package — which includes ₩170 billion ($124 million) from the Advanced Strategic Industry Fund, a Korean state pool earmarked for priority technologies — carries a 12-year maturity and is to be spent entirely on facilities, the company said. The subsidiary was selected at a May 28 review committee of the National Growth Fund, a Korean government policy-finance vehicle, per L&F's announcement (Chosun Biz, June 4; ET News, June 4).
The question for anyone watching Korea's cathode complex is whether cheap, patient capital plus a signed offtake is enough to turn L&F's LFP push into a credible non-China supply source. The loan is sized to matter: against the ₩338.2 billion ($247 million) L&F has said the plant will cost in total (Digital Today, reporting on the L&F Plus facility), the ₩220 billion covers roughly 65% of the build at policy rates — meaningfully de-risking the financing of a pivot into a chemistry Korean suppliers have historically ceded to China.
That pivot follows a steep downturn in L&F's legacy business. The company, founded in 2000 and headquartered in Daegu, built its scale on high-nickel NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) cathodes for premium EVs; its revenue fell to ₩1.91 trillion in 2024 from ₩4.64 trillion a year earlier, a 58.9% drop, as EV-grade demand cooled (stockanalysis.com). L&F's market capitalization stood at about ₩5.81 trillion ($4.2 billion) as of June 4, 2026 (stockanalysis.com). LFP — cheaper and more thermally stable than NCM, though lower in energy density — is the company's route into the energy-storage and entry-level EV segments now driving battery growth.
The plant itself is already built. L&F established L&F Plus as a 100%-owned unit in August 2025 and completed the roughly 100,000-square-meter facility, in the phase-2 section of the national industrial complex in Dalseong-gun, Daegu, in May 2026 — nine months after groundbreaking (Chosun Biz, June 4). Mass production of 30,000 tons per year is slated to begin by the end of the third quarter of 2026, with capacity set to double to 60,000 tons per year by the first half of 2027 (ET News and Chosun Biz, June 4). L&F notes that no Korean company yet runs commercial-scale LFP cathode output (Chosun Biz, June 4).
Demand visibility comes from a major customer. In March 2026, Samsung SDI signed a ₩1.6 trillion ($1.17 billion) LFP cathode supply agreement with L&F, running three years from 2027 with an option to extend, to feed energy-storage batteries for the North American market — including Samsung SDI's StarPlus Energy joint venture with Stellantis in Indiana (Korea Herald, March 2026). That contract gives the new capacity a contracted anchor as it ramps.
The strategic backdrop is supply-chain concentration: LFP cathode production today sits overwhelmingly in China, and both Korean cell makers and their Western customers are seeking non-China sources to qualify for U.S. incentives. "This National Growth Fund approval recognizes the importance of LFP cathode localization in the secondary-battery sector and our independent technology," L&F CEO Heo Je-hong said, adding the funding would help "strengthen core-material supply chains in Korea and North America" (Chosun Biz, June 4).
The near-term test is execution. The first confirmation point is whether L&F Plus hits its end-Q3 2026 start of 30,000-ton production on schedule; the next is L&F's group earnings, due July 30, 2026 (stockanalysis.com), which will show how quickly the LFP ramp offsets the NCM revenue decline. Until commercial output and shipments to Samsung SDI begin in 2027, the localization thesis rests on capacity and contracts rather than realized sales.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Figures are drawn from company announcements and cited reporting; USD conversions use an approximate rate of 1,370 KRW per USD unless a source specified otherwise.
