Lotte Corporation leaps towards business transition, innovation

Lotte is taking a giant step to transition and innovates its businesses with four pivotal themes including health & wellness, sustainability, mobility and a new lifestyle platform. The company will also strengthen its market position by...

[LOTTE CORPORATION]

Lotte is taking a giant step to transition and innovates its businesses with four pivotal themes including health & wellness, sustainability, mobility and a new lifestyle platform. The company will also strengthen its market position by reconstructing its business portfolio.

It will ambitiously pursue its future growth blueprint, with Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin saying, “This year will be crucial for the company prove its years of effort for a rebound,” during a Value Creating Meeting in the first half of 2023.

Lotte Energy Materials expressed its firm goal of being a front–runner in the global high-end elecfoil industry by 2028. Responding to the rapid growth of elecfoil industries along with global demand for rechargeable batteries in electric vehicles, Lotte Energy Materials unveiled its key strategies to be among the first market dominators on July 4th.

These strategies are based on the implementation of super-gap technology and expanding major base areas that include Korea, Malaysia, Europe, and North America. The company aims to hit 15 trillion won in sales this year and 20 trillion won by 2025.

Lotte’s advantage is it can leverage its manufacturing know-how gained by pioneering domestic elecfoil production in Korea. Based on this expertise, Lotte is developing product lines ranging from wide-use product to high-end hybrid product. By doing so, it aims to promptly address global battery companies’ growing demand for elecfoil.

Lotte Energy Materials is building plants in Malaysia and will begin mass production in earnest from 2024 to stabilize supply chains. Its European base has been established in Spain, and it is also considering opening a North American production plant to meet the high growth potential in the market.

Its production plant in Iksan, North Jeolla, will concentrate on producing high-value products rather than producing wide-use products.

The company also plans to ramp up developing next-generation battery materials. Based on the partnership between research personnel and global batteries, research on materials such as solid electrolytes are underway.

Lotte Biologics, with its health & wellness theme, aims to be a global top 10 contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) company by 2030.

It completed the acquisition of its Syracuse plant in the U.S. earlier this year, signed a MOU with Incheon Metropolitan City on June 20, 2023, to enable the prompt construction of a biopharmaceutical production facility.

With the MOU, Lotte Biologics will establish a strategic cooperative relationship to expedite the construction of the domestic mega plant within this year and vitalize Songdo’s biotech cluster.

The company aims to build three mega plants in Songdo, Incheon that are expected to be able to produce 360 thousand liters of drugs by 2030, which will also have small incubators for the production of clinical substances.

These facilities are aligned with the company's Bio-Venture Initiative that provides places for bio venture companies to develop, thus enhancing Korea’s bio industry ecosystem.

A projected view of the vertiport in Lotte’s urban air mobility (UAM) project [LOTTE CORPORATION]

Lotte is also strengthening its capabilities in mobility fields including self-driving shuttle and Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS), as well as urban air mobility (UAM). Lotte Data Communication Company, Lotte Engineering & Construction, and Lotte Rental signed a business agreement with Seongnam, Gyeonggi to create a foundation for UAM at Lotte World Tower on July 6, 2023.

The companies and Seongnam city will review sites for a vertiport (aircraft vertical take-off and landing terminal), secure air routes for demonstration and commercialization, and improve social acceptance for future-oriented development.

Via its Lotte Consortium, which includes three Lotte’s subsidiary companies, Lotte jointly submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to participate in the K-UAM Grand Challenge, a national demonstration project for integrated UAM operation.

The Lotte Consortium is developing a plan to establish a differentiated vertiport that can safely connect major Lotte Corporation-owned bases and provide UAM services linked to existing transportation networks.

To this end, the consortium signed a technology cooperation partnership in February 2023 with Skyports, a UK company specializing in UAM vertiports, with work currently underway on the infrastructure design and operation technology.

Lotte Data Communication Company is also promoting the commercialization of self-driving shuttles, inking a business agreement with the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association on May 19, 2023.

In collaboration with the association, Lotte Data Communication Company plans to secure core technologies that can hit automatic driving’s level 5 by sharing technologies, a level enabling complete autonomous driving without the need for driver intervention.

The core technology to reach this level 5 is Software Defined Vehicle (SDV). When SDV technology is applied, users can choose the functions to add to and upgrade their cars, just as they install their chosen apps on a smartphone to add to its functions.

The duo plans to use advanced mobility technology to enter the Connected Car demonstration business that wirelessly interacts with all of the city’s infrastructure.

BY KIM SU-HYEON [kim.suhyeon4@joongang.co.kr]