SK Innovation Aims at Becoming Global Integrated Energy Player

The company sets its 2020 revenue target at 100 tln won

"As this year is the first year of inaugurating an independent management structure, SK Innovation seeks to build a foundation to compete with global majors by expanding its global presence based on its technological power and cultivating new growth businesses and to come from strength to strength to become a world-class integrated energy corporation with the goal of raising its revenues from 43.86 trillion won in 2010 to more than 100 trillion won in 2020."
SK Innovation CEO Koo Ja-young made the remark as he outlined his company's future blueprint at a shareholders' general meeting last March.
Starting Jan. 1, the former "SK Energy" transformed itself into a four-company structure. The company has changed its name to SK Innovation and separated the petroleum business into SK Energy, the chemical business into SK Global Chemical and the lubricants business into SK Lubricants. The independent management structure separating the petroleum and chemical business is designed to respond rapidly to the changes in the business environment and expedite growth through a fast decision-making process. Each company will be managed with optimized strategies fitted for its unique business environment under the new vision and goals, said SK Innovation Managing Director Kim Jong-soo.
SK Innovation is stepping on the gas to pursue technology innovation with the goal of rising to the level of a global integrated energy corporation with a focus on future energy. The company has secured technologies such as petroleum refining, petrochemical catalyst and lubricant processes, and CEO Koo is determined to develop green energy such as electric vehicle batteries, information electronics materials, green polymer and green coal in keeping with the low-carbon growth paradigm.
In December 2009, SK Innovation was selected as a supplier of lithium-ion batteries for a hybrid electric vehicle project for Daimler's commercial vehicle subsidiary, Mitsubishi Fuso. SK Innovation has gained ground in the electric vehicle battery business by becoming a supplier of electric vehicle batteries for the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group's project for mass-producing BlueOn, its high-speed electric vehicle on the i-10 platform, and Kia Motors Corp.'s next-generation mass production EV models this past July.
In late May 2010, SK Innovation established its first EV battery production line with an annual capacity of 100MWh. On May 30, 2011, the company broke ground for a project to build an EV battery production line with an annual capacity of 500MWh on a site of 231,000 sq. meters in Seosan, Chungcheongnam-do, with its dedication slated for next year. The project will bring the company's annual combined EV battery capacity to 600MWh, equivalent to supplying batteries to more than 30,000 EVs.
SK Energy, focusing on SK Innovation's petroleum business, is striving to evolve into a global trading company on top of the nation's largest petroleum refining and sales company. SK Energy plans to establish itself as a leading export company, as it exported 82.58 million barrels of the top three value-added petroleum exports ― gasoline, diesel and kerosene ― during last year.
SK Energy chalked up a record high of 12.24 trillion won in sales in the first quarter of this year, the first announcement of management achievements since its spin-off from SK Innovation, and posted a record high for petroleum exports in the second quarter, good omens for the successful settlement of its independent management structure.
SK Global Chemical, which has successfully made inroads into the Chinese market, is aiming to become Asia's representative chemical company. In particular, the company has come up with massive investment plans, accelerating its efforts to upgrade the existing businesses.
SK Global Chemical is aggressively turning to the production of value-added products. The company decided to invest about 370 billion won to build a Nexlene production plant with an annual capacity of 230,000 tons within the SK Ulsan Industrial Complex with completion slated for next year.
With such investments, SK Global Chemical plans to become a major player in the global value-added polymer market, which has shown signs of an average 10 percent annual growth. The market is now dominated by global players like Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobil. nw

A researcher at SK Innovation is testing one of the electric vehicle batteries. The company is giving its concerted efforts to become a global integrated energy player.

Photo on Courtesy of SK Innovation