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EV Battery ComponentsThe market that lives inside the can.
EV Battery Components
The market that lives inside the can.
In 2023 the world bought somewhere between US$1.2 billion and US$3.7 billion of battery structural components — the metal shells that house a lithium-ion cell — depending on which house you read, and they disagree by more than fourfold on how fast it grows from here. What is not in dispute is the shape: three makers control roughly 59% of the world's power-battery cell cans, one Chinese company controls about half of that, and the whole market is rotating from cylindrical to prismatic form factors at the same time it migrates from China to the United States. This is a study of that casing market through one unusually clean participant, Korea's Sangsin EDP — Samsung SDI's prismatic-can supplier, whose books read as a single cell maker's casing demand.
Prismatic lithium-ion battery cells in their hard aluminum cans. The casing market is not the battery — it is the metal shell around it, a high-volume, low-shipping-density part that must be built next to the cell plant. Sangsin EDP supplies roughly 80% of Samsung SDI's prismatic-can sourcing, which makes one supplier's revenue an unusually clean read on one cell maker's casing demand.
Inside every lithium-ion battery is a part almost no one outside the supply chain ever names: the can. It is the metal shell that houses the cell — a rectangular hard-shell aluminum box for the prismatic format, a round tube for the cylindrical — and it is a market unto itself, sold by a small set of specialists to a smaller set of cell makers. It is also a market that is unusually hard to size. Size the battery structural-component market forward to 2030 and the published houses do not agree: one puts prismatic structure components on a 29.0% compound rate, another puts the aluminum-case segment at 6.6%, and most of the rest cluster in the mid-teens. The spread is more than fourfold, and it is the honest answer, not a footnote — the tier-1 houses size the rings on either side of this market but not the narrow can-component layer itself, which is exactly why it stays range-y.
What is not in dispute is the structure. This market is a near-oligopoly: three makers control roughly 59% of the world's power-battery cell cans, and a single Chinese company, Kedali, controls about half on the narrow cell-casing measure. It is rotating from cylindrical toward prismatic form factors, and it is migrating geographically — out of China and into the United States — as non-Chinese cell makers localize to escape anti-China battery tariffs. This is a study of that casing market through one unusually clean participant inside it, Korea's Sangsin EDP, and of why a casing maker has no cycle of its own — it inherits the cell makers', amplified at the margin.
A casing market sized by a fourfold-wide fan
7–29% CAGR
Houses disagree by more than fourfold on the battery structural-component SAM: prismatic structure components at 29.0% (high edge, USD 3.7bn 2023 → ~USD 22bn 2030) against aluminum-case at 6.6% (low outlier), with a mid-teens cluster between. Three makers — Kedali, Sangsin EDP, LT Precision — hold ~59% of global power-battery cell cans; Kedali alone ~51% on the narrow cell-casing scope. Sources: QYResearch family (semiconductorinsight; openpr; verifiedmarketreports); TYCORUN.
How the market is sized: three nested rings, one range
The casing market only makes sense as the inner ring of a nested structure, and sizing it requires naming which ring each house is measuring. The outer ring is the global lithium-ion battery market — cells, packs, systems — where houses agree on a roughly 20% growth rate but disagree on the 2024 base level by about 3.5x, from US$58 billion to US$201 billion, purely on what they count. That spread is a definitional artifact, cell-only versus pack-and-system, not a forecasting disagreement. The takeaway for the casing market is the direction of cell demand, not the absolute level, which is why no single TAM figure should be propagated forward.
The middle ring is the addressable market: battery structural components and cans — the metal shells a company like Sangsin EDP actually sells. This is the cleanest proxy for the casing market, and the disagreement here is large and real. The 29.0% prismatic-components edge embeds the full prismatic mix-shift on top of volume growth; the 12–14.5% aluminum-case cluster is the conservative center of gravity; 6.6% is a low outlier embedding aluminum-case price compression. The right way to show it is a fan with every house's base and forecast visible, never a manufactured single number — most of these are second-tier aggregator houses in the QYResearch family, and the band should be treated as a band, not averaged. The inner ring is the segment lens: prismatic versus cylindrical, aluminum versus steel, and the 4680/46-series large-cylindrical segment whose estimates span US$8.5 billion to US$650 billion by 2030 and are therefore shown directionally only, never as a point.
Scope
Base year
2030–32 size
CAGR
Prismatic structure comp. (high)
USD 3.7bn (2023)
USD ~22bn
29.0%
Battery structural parts (mid)
USD 3.4bn (2024)
USD 10.1bn
16.8%
Power-battery Al case (cons.)
USD 1.16bn (2024)
USD 2.9bn
14.5%
Al-alloy case (dataintelo)
USD 1.2bn (2023)
USD 3.4bn
12.2%
Al-alloy case (low outlier)
USD 1.5bn (2023)
USD 2.5bn
6.6%
The casing SAM across houses — base→forecast, every house shown rather than collapsed to one number. The fan runs from a 6.6% low outlier to a 29.0% high edge; the credible center of gravity is the mid-teens cluster. Most are QYResearch-family aggregator houses — attributed as such and treated as a band, never averaged. Sources: QYResearch family (semiconductorinsight; openpr; verifiedmarketreports); dataintelo / MR Intellect; NRG recompute.
The prismatic aluminum can — the market's growth core. Prismatic is winning the cell-format war, rising from about 40% of top-six-maker volume in 2020 toward roughly 65% by 2030 on volumetric energy density, pack packaging and thermal management. Every point of share that shifts from pouch to prismatic adds a casing maker to the bill of materials, because a pouch cell has no metal can at all.
What is pulling demand — and the five-year cycle behind it
Casing demand is a derivative of cell demand, which splits into two very different end-markets plus a form-factor mix-shift that decides which line gets the order. EV is the largest single sink and the volatility source: global registrations still rose in 2025 but US BEV sales fell 28% in early 2026 after the federal EV tax credit lapsed, and Korean cell makers were hit hard — LG Energy Solution utilization fell to 47.6% in 2025 from 73.6% in 2022. Because casing demand sits downstream of cell utilization, that trough flowed straight through the can makers. ESS is the structural, counter-cyclical floor: the BESS market is forecast to compound 15.8% to about US$106 billion by 2030, US ESS demand rises from 59 GWh in 2025 to 142 GWh by 2030, and Samsung SDI — the only non-Chinese prismatic maker — is converting three US lines from EV to LFP-ESS toward roughly 30 GWh of US capacity. Prismatic-share gain sits on top of both, lifting the right suppliers regardless of total cell-market growth.
The cleanest way to see all three forces at once is to read them through one supplier's five-year results, because the casing market has no independent cycle — it inherits the cell makers' cycle and amplifies it at the margin. The arc is the thesis: an EV-driven boom in 2021–23, an EV-chasm trough with an outright operating loss in 2024 as cell-maker utilization collapsed, and an ESS-led recovery in 2025 as the prismatic and US ramp offset the declining round-CAN leg. Revenue fell about 17% from peak to 2025, but operating income swung from a positive ₩30.2 billion to a loss and back — a far larger range — because casing lines carry fixed cost against utilization that collapses with the cell maker's.
The casing cycle in one supplier's books — FY2021–25Consolidated revenue (bars) against recomputed operating margin (line), read as market evidence of the casing cycle's inherited shape — not as a company value argument. The margin swing from +11.3% (2022) through −3.3% (2024) back to +3.5% (2025) is the amplification point: the can market does not merely track the cell cycle, it amplifies it. FY2024 uses the corrected series (rev ₩251.8bn / OP −₩8.2bn). Source: DART 20260602000490 (corrected FY2025 Annual Report, 2026-06-02); NRG recompute.
Underneath the cycle runs a quieter, more durable signal: the rotation from round to prismatic. Read through the same supplier's product-line split, prismatic-CAN revenue rose from ₩124.1 billion in 2023 to ₩140.8 billion in 2025 — 56% of revenue — while round-CAN revenue fell from ₩135.0 billion to ₩80.3 billion, now 32%. Within a roughly flat total, demand is rotating out of legacy round CAN and into prismatic, which is exactly the StoreDot/Frost market call observable in one supplier's books. The supporting micro-evidence runs the same way: prismatic exports jumped from ₩3.6 billion in 2023 to ₩35.4 billion in 2025 — the ESS and US-ramp signature — while round-CAN utilization fell from 65.6% in 2023 to 34.5% in 2025, visible overcapacity in the declining leg.
The demand read, in one line
EV swings, ESS floors
EV is the cyclical swing — US BEV −28% early 2026 after the credit cliff, LG ES utilization 47.6% (2025) vs 73.6% (2022). ESS is the structural floor — BESS 15.8% CAGR to USD 106bn by 2030, US ESS 59→142 GWh, Samsung SDI converting 3 US lines to LFP-ESS (~30 GWh, mass production H2-2026). Prismatic-share gain toward ~65% by 2030 lifts the right suppliers regardless. Sources: Seoulz; KED Global; Samsung SDI; The Elec; MarketsandMarkets; SNE Research; StoreDot / Frost & Sullivan.
The structural divide: a Chinese anchor against two Korean ecosystems
Strip the casing market down and it is not one open, contestable pool — it is a near-oligopoly organized into ecosystem-bound sub-markets. Three makers hold roughly 59% of the world's power-battery cell cans, and the single largest is Kedali, the Chinese cost-and-scale anchor that runs at about half the world's cell casings on the narrow scope and serves CATL alongside the Korean cell makers globally. Its own 2024 report puts it at about 29% of all lithium-ion structural parts on the broader scope — two different denominators that should be kept apart and never averaged. Beneath that anchor sit two camps drawn around the Korean cell makers: a Samsung SDI ecosystem, where Sangsin EDP supplies the CAN and Shinheung SEC the cap assembly, co-located across Hungary, China, Malaysia and now the US; and an LG Energy Solution ecosystem served by LT Precision and an entering Dongwon Systems. Each casing maker anchors to one cell-maker ecosystem, which makes any single one a near-pure read on its anchor's volume.
The scale gap inside that structure is the first thing to register: Kedali operates at roughly ten times the lens company's revenue. The wedge that actually moves share, though, is geopolitics. US anti-China battery tariffs and IRA-era localization push the non-Chinese cell makers to build in the United States, which creates new local casing markets that the Chinese leader is structurally disadvantaged to serve — the casing market geographically tracks cell-plant build-out, so a new gigafactory creates a new local casing market. That is the single most important competitive dynamic for the non-Chinese cohort, and it is why a sub-scale Korean supplier can grow its served market even as the global cost leader keeps its lead. Selling here is engineering, not marketing: the buying criteria are development lead-time, quality and delivery, lines are co-located adjacent to cell plants, and orders arrive as weekly production plans rather than formal purchase orders.
Maker
Listing
Latest FY revenue
Position
Kedali
SHE 002850
RMB 12.03bn (~USD 1.7bn)
Global #1 cell-casing maker
Shinheung SEC
KOSDAQ 243840
₩408.2bn (~USD 0.30bn)
Samsung SDI cap assembly + CAN
Sangsin EDP
KOSDAQ 091580
₩250.1bn (~USD 0.18bn)
Samsung SDI CAN supplier
LT Precision
Private
not collected
LG ES round-CAN supplier
Dongwon Systems
KOSPI
not collected
Entering LG ES prismatic CAN
Peer scale and position, latest disclosed FY — the Chinese anchor against the Korean cohort. System and revenue figures are company-reported / disclosed; LT Precision (private) and Dongwon Systems (KOSPI) financials were not collected and are positioned qualitatively, with no invented numbers. KRW→USD @ ~1,375. Sources: TYCORUN; Kedali FY24 report; Shinheung SEC FY25 disclosure; DART 20260602000490; etoday / dailyinvest IR.
Why geography decides share. Casing is a just-in-time, high-volume, low-shipping-density part, so component lines are built adjacent to cell plants — the casing market geographically tracks cell-plant build-out. As Samsung SDI and LG Energy Solution localize US production to escape anti-China battery tariffs, the served market shifts toward suppliers that can co-locate in the US, structurally favoring the Korean cohort over the Chinese cost leader in that one sub-market.
The case in point: one supplier as the market's instrument
Sangsin EDP is worth reading because it is an unusually clean instrument for the Samsung SDI casing sub-market: one product family of metal cans, one anchor customer at roughly 91% of revenue, and a footprint that mirrors that customer's plant map. Its product mix is the market call made concrete — 56% prismatic against 32% round is the prismatic-wins thesis as one supplier's revenue split. And its geography reads as the cell maker's plants: in FY2025, Korea held flat at ₩83.5 billion, Hungary softened to ₩71.2 billion and China to ₩29.6 billion as the EV chasm and footprint re-pointing played out, while US revenue jumped roughly fivefold to ₩25.1 billion from ₩4.8 billion. That US jump is the single most important geographic signal in the whole study — the de-China localization wedge expressed in revenue, the casing market migrating to the United States with the cell makers.
The casing footprint follows the cell plants — FY2025 by region
US ₩25.1bn, ~5x
US revenue jumped roughly 5x in one year, from ₩4.8bn (FY2024) to ₩25.1bn (FY2025) — the de-China localization wedge expressed in revenue. Korea held flat at ₩83.5bn; Hungary softened to ₩71.2bn (from ₩81.7bn) and China to ₩29.6bn (from ₩36.8bn) as the EV chasm and footprint re-pointing played out; Malaysia flat at ₩35.7bn. The casing market migrates to the US with the cell makers. Source: DART 20260602000490 (corrected FY2025 Annual Report, 2026-06-02); NRG recompute.
The customer-concentration figure is the point, not a caveat. A single customer — Samsung SDI, by public IR — accounted for about ₩226.6 billion of FY2025 revenue, roughly 91% of the consolidated total. Read as a market-structure fact rather than a risk rating, that is precisely what makes the company a clean lens: for this participant, the casing market's fortunes are Samsung SDI's casing demand. The selling logic confirms the structure — no formal purchase orders, just weekly production plans; a stated strategy of import-substituting Japanese suppliers; a required 45-day lead time to the cell maker. One company's two utilization rates even show the market's rotation directly: round-CAN load at 34.5% in 2025, under-loaded and declining, while prismatic capacity ramps with the new lines.
The forward signal is the US build-out, dated and line-counted through this one supplier. Across Sangsin Indiana, established in 2023, and Sangsin Kokomo, established in 2025, the company is adding three to four prismatic-CAN lines — from six toward nine or ten total — with setup targeted for Q3 2026 and production for Q4 2026, to serve Samsung SDI's roughly 30 GWh of US LFP-ESS capacity near the Samsung SDI–Stellantis StarPlus Energy plant in Kokomo, Indiana. The company explicitly cites US anti-China battery tariffs as a share-gain tailwind. Read as market evidence, this is the casing market's US-localization wave made legible in one supplier's line count and clearance calendar.
Where the durable demand is going. ESS is the structural, counter-cyclical floor under prismatic-can demand — policy- and data-center-anchored, less cyclical than EV. Samsung SDI is converting three US lines to LFP-ESS toward ~30 GWh near Kokomo, Indiana, and the casing makers follow the line conversion. Sangsin EDP's US capacity build-out — 3–4 new prismatic-CAN lines, production targeted Q4 2026 — is that wave expressed in one supplier's line count.
The real throttle: the cell maker's cycle, not the casing market's
The constraint outsiders most consistently underweight is that this market has no will of its own. A casing maker cannot grow faster than its anchor cell maker's utilization allows, cannot enter a geography before the cell plant arrives, and cannot escape the EV cycle by wishing — it can only re-point toward the structural ESS floor as fast as the cell maker converts lines. That is why the forward view is best drawn as a fan rather than a forecast: the addressable market runs somewhere in the wide band between a 6.6% low outlier and a 29.0% high edge, with a mid-teens center of gravity, and the single biggest swing variable is the timing of the EV recovery, which the houses cannot agree on. The honest deliverable is to put the SAM fan and the ESS floor side by side and let EV-recovery timing be the explicit swing, never to print one blended number.
“A casing maker is a cell maker's cycle wearing a different name. The decisive question in this market is never how good the can is — it is which cell-maker ecosystem the supplier is bound to, how fast that ecosystem can re-point from EV to ESS and from China to the United States, and whether the new lines arrive before the old ones empty.”
— Nathan Research Group, EV Battery Components Series N°01
Where the market goes from here
Project the casing market forward and three environments hold the possibilities, all describing the market rather than any price. In the first, ESS-led structural growth, renewables and AI-data-center power demand plus US LFP localization sustain prismatic-can demand straight through the EV trough; the SAM tracks the mid-to-high band and geography re-points from automotive to grid, with non-Chinese makers benefiting disproportionately from the de-China wedge. In the second, an EV-recovery reflation as the credit-cliff shock fades after 2027, both round and prismatic lines refill, cell-maker utilization rebuilds toward 2022 levels, and even the emergent 46-series segment starts to matter. In the third, a China-cost compression in which Kedali's scale and broad Chinese oversupply push realized value-CAGR toward the conservative-to-low band even as unit volume grows, with the US tariff wedge the partial offset that keeps the non-Chinese served market expanding.
Scenario
What drives it
Where the SAM lands
ESS-led structural growth
Renewables + AI-data-center power + US LFP localization carry demand through the EV trough.
Mid-to-high band (~16–29%).
EV-recovery reflation
Credit-cliff shock fades post-2027; round and prismatic lines both refill toward 2022 utilization.
Upper band; legacy round-CAN re-rates.
China-cost compression
Kedali scale + Chinese oversupply compress non-Chinese case margins; tariff wedge the partial offset.
Conservative-to-low band (~6.6–14.5%).
Three environments for the casing market, ~5-yr forward — market scenarios, not price targets. Each is defined by a market outcome (ESS conversion pace, EV-recovery timing, China cost pressure), never by a target valuation. The fan spans a 6.6% low outlier to a 29.0% high edge; the center of gravity is the mid-teens. Source: NRG scenario synthesis on the QYResearch-family SAM band and tier-1 demand anchors; describes the market environment only.
The lesson generalizes past one company and past battery cans. In any market where a component sits captive inside a downstream maker's cycle — the casing inside the cell, the connector inside the device, the sensor inside the platform — the supplier's fortunes are not its own to set; they are inherited, amplified at the margin, and re-pointed only as fast as the customer re-points. The battery-can market is a vivid case: it has no independent cycle, a near-oligopolistic structure, a form-factor rotation and a geographic migration all running at once, and the cleanest way to read it is through one participant whose books are a single cell maker's casing demand laid bare. Which way the fan resolves is decided in cell-maker utilization rates and US line conversions, ecosystem by ecosystem — not in any single year's revenue line. Our full brief on the lithium-ion battery-can and structural-component market — the sizing and its dispersion, the value-chain economics, the concentration map and the forward scenarios — is available to download with this article.
Working With Nathan Research Group
Partner With Nathan Research Group
Public filings and market forecasts establish the shape of the battery-can market — the concentration figures, the form-factor share curves, the wide-band 2030 estimates that disagree by fourfold. What they cannot show is what a casing line actually earns per unit once it is qualified, how durable a co-located supplier's position really is when a cell maker re-points its plant map, and whether a company-reported US capacity ramp has converted into loaded lines on the ground. That intelligence lives with the engineers, procurement leads and plant operators who qualify, buy and compete for this work — and reaching them, compliantly, is what we do.
Korea’s first dedicated expert network — Seoul, since 2013
Who we put in the room
Battery-can manufacturing & qualification lead
Process engineers who have run prismatic and round-CAN lines — on draw/iron tooling, qualification cycles, and what a 45-day lead-time requirement actually demands of a supplier.
Samsung SDI / cell-maker procurement
Casing is bought on weekly production plans, not formal POs. Procurement insiders read how share-of-customer is set, defended, and lost inside one cell maker's ecosystem.
ESS & US-localization operator
Samsung SDI is converting US lines to LFP-ESS near Kokomo. Operators read whether the casing ramp follows the cell plant on the timeline the filings imply.
China battery-component competitive structure (Kedali)
Kedali runs at roughly ten times the lens company's scale. Insiders read the cost gap, the de-China tariff wedge, and where the contestable US sub-market actually moves.
Aluminum supply chain & FX
The can is overwhelmingly aluminum, sold on thin per-unit economics. Supply-chain specialists read coil sourcing, price compression, and FX across a six-region footprint.
Battery-form-factor & demand structure
Prismatic versus pouch versus 46-series decides which line gets the order. Analysts read the mix-shift pace and the EV-to-ESS demand re-pointing behind the curve.
How an engagement works
1Scope
We turn your thesis into a precise expert profile and question set, mapped to the decisions you need to close.
2Source & vet
We screen and compliance-clear each expert — relevance, recency, and the absence of conflicts — before any call.
3Convene & synthesize
We arrange interviews on your timeline and, where useful, deliver written synthesis tied back to your questions.
If your team is evaluating Sangsin EDP, the battery structural-component market, or the broader EV-battery supply chain, tell us the decision you’re trying to make.
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Based solely on public sources. Nathan Research Group does not request or facilitate material non-public information, and runs every engagement through a documented compliance protocol.
