Eyeing for Super-class Global Biz Group

STX Group to focus on shipbuilding, shipping, energy, and construction under Vision 2020

STX Group celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 29 at its Dalian Shipyard in Dalian, China, with a declaration for its 2020 Vision, aimed at being ranked the 7th largest business group in Korea.
The 10th anniversary vision unveiled at the STX Dalian Shipyard with some 1,000 local officials, guests and group's leading executives in attendance, swore that the group will post 120 trillion won in annual turnovers by 2020 backed up strategies to make STX Offshore and Shipbuilding, its major affiliate, to make a top global concern, maximize the group's effective management, establishment of management system of the group and securing new growth engines for the group.
Chairman Kang Duk-soo in his speech, said we will achieve our aim to record 120 trillion won in annual sales in 2020 to become a super-class global concern with every one in the group doing his best with initiatives and challenging spirit. He said what we should not forget in the process of our second jump in operation is strengthening partnership with cooperative firms for shared growth in true sense of words and do our best in fulfilling our corporate social responsibility to create jobs.
Kang said we should daringly forget out past performances, but forge ahead with a new resolution to prepare for our future. He said the group's main growth engines have been shipbuilding and marine structure up until now, but we will focus on energy and natural resources from now on o sustain our operations and grow.
The chairman said the group will have to set its strategies by each nation in which it operates and will do business in the future and explore the core areas of their natural resources to the extent that the group's total annual turnover would reach 30 trillion won in the sector in the next 10 years and operating profit of 2.4 trillion won.
In a ceremony on May 2, 2001 at Ssangyong Heavy Industries' engine plant n Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, Chairman Kang Duk-soo declared the birth of STX taking over the Ssangyong Heavy Industries and renaming the company. The chairman said today is the most significant day as Ssangyong Heavy Industries which contributed greatly to the development of the national economy in the 1980s since its launch in 1976, is reborn as STX following its separation from Ssangyong Group in January.
Since the day, STX Group has grown to rank the 12th in Korea in terms of asset and sales in 2010. Its assets totaled 32 trillion won and sales 26 trillion won, surprising the country, the business community in particular.
STX is continuing to challenging itself to fulfill its goal of becoming the leading company in terms of value in every corner of the world, along with the nine domestic affiliates sharing STX's brand and management ideology in four major business sector- Shipbuilding and Machinery, Shipping and Trading, Plant and Construction, and Energy. STX consists of the perfect business portfolio, covering everything from shipbuilding equipment and materials to marine engine manufacturing, shipbuilding and shipping with STX Pan Ocean, a world-class shipping company; STX Offshore and Shipbuilding, one of our largest integrated shipbuilding enterprises in the world; and STX Engine, one of the world's three largest engine makers. With these core businesses at the center of its growth, STX is able to maximize the synergistic effect between its various sectors by branching into related industries such as plant, construction, and energy, etc.
STX Group's growth in the past decade has been nothing but dramatic fanned by the 2007 take over of Aker Yards, the world's largest passenger cruiser builder located in Norway and a number of its shipyards all over Europe including Finland and renamed it as STX Europe. The event has gone as the biggest one in the annals of Korean shipbuilding industry, showing that what STX can do in the future to be a leader in the business community in Korea, although it was launched only in 2000.
STX expanded the business areas of STX Europe to include general merchant ships, passenger cruisers, offshore marine plants, and military vessels to be an all-round shipyard. STX had Aker Yards traditional European shipbuilding technologies mixed with STX's shipbuilding know-how and shipbuilding materials supply for their mutual growth.
STX with its shipbuilding yards in Europe, Korea and China built a foundation for its great leap to become a top shipbuilder in the world. The group also took over "Harakosan Europe" and launched STX Windpower to make its name in the windpower industry.
STX Group launched the STX Future Institute in a ceremony held on May 23, a unit made of some 20 staffers to focus on the development of strategies to achieve the group's operational objectives, one of the four key objectives in the Vision 2020. Shin Chul-shik, former vice chairman of the group, has been named to head the institute.
The number of personnel at the institute will be expanded to around 50 in the near future as it will be registered as an independent corporation so that it will be able to present independent views and analyses on the group's operation and directions of its strategies, among others.
The new institute plans to recruit research staff from such well-known global strategy and consultations firms as MacKenzie Consulting and AT Kearny, among others, to make itself as an agent for change within the group in such areas as management strategy and other key areas of the group's operations, sources of the group said.
The institute will come up with ideas for the group's core future strategic decisions as the need occurs in line with its core responsibilities, which also include the analyzing strategic problems, major new projects and new businesses on their feasibilities and implementation directions as they are needed.
The institute is also called on to come up with ideas for setting up systems to appropriately push the existing strategies and management processes based on successful samples of global business operations.
Officials of the group said the ultimate role of the new institution is to provide help to Chairman Kang so he may make timely decisions in the fast changing business world. nw

Chairman Kang Duk-soo of STX Group

An aerial view of Dalian shipyard in Dalian, China, of STX Offshore and Shipbuilding Co.

A view of the Oasis of the Sea and its sister cruiser that STX Europe, former Aker Yards of Norway, the biggest shipyard for building cruisers in the world, built and delivered to its owner last year and early this year at its shipyard in Finland.

Photo on Courtesy of STX