SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (Photos:SK Group)

SK Innovation,the nation’s biggest energy company, which redoubled its EV battery production capacity last July, is working on another expansion initiative. The current project, aimed to increase the capacity to 40,000 units, a 30 percent increase from the current 30,000 units, is to be finished in the third quarter of the year.

SK Innovation supplies batteries for such cars as Kia Motors’ Soul EV and Beijing Auto’s Sevena EV200. 

On March 17, SK Innovation launched the project to expand the production capacity of the EV battery plant in Seosan, Chungcheongnam-do, to an equivalent of supplying batteries to 40,000 electric vehicles. The move is part of the business group’s efforts to ramp up the new energy business, which it pegged early this year as a main driver of future growth. 

The company has been awarded a contract to supply battery cells to EVs Benz starting next year. 

“We’ve already secured a backlog of supplies for seven years,” said Kim Hong-dae, president of SK Innovation Battery & Information Business. He added that the EV battery plant will be put into operation around the clock after the expansion work is finished.

SK Group formed a new energy business task force under the umbrella of the SUPEX Consultative Committee. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has been devoting himself to exploring new businesses in order to get a head start on top of the EV battery business upon his return to chairman of the group. He is spearheading the realization of a vision to find new industries that will drive growth for not only SK Group, but also the nation, group officials said. 

Chairman Chey’s mission will be realized through SK Holdings, a holding company of the business group. SK Holdings is reinventing itself as an entity charged with translating into action the group’s growth strategies through aggressive M&As and decision-making in investments, departing from the conventional role as a holding company. 

Chances are high that Chairman Chey will take office as the chairman of the Board of Directors of SK Holdings. After making a shift to a holding company structure in 2007, major decisions were left to SK Holdings. But since 2013, the SUPEX Consultative Committee has been taking over major decisions from SK Holdings, which in turn has been engaged in its own businesses. Since Chairman Chey’s return to top management, he has overseen projects to nurture new businesses. SK Holdings has been coming up with investment plans to nurture growth engines in five arenas semiconductor material/module; bio/pharmaceuticals; liquefied natural gas; IT services; and ICT. 

Last November, SK Group fired a salvo by acquiring OCI Materials, now SK Materials. The group secured a platform to enter the material industry by taking over a 49.1 percent stake in OCI Materials, a global nitron fluorine three maker, for some 490 billion won. In the same month, SKJ Group acquired a 20 percent stake in Shocar, the nation’s No. 1 car sharing company, for 59 billion won. Shocar has some 3,200 cars in operation with a membership of 1.3 million members. The company signed maintenance agreements with SK Networks. 

Chairman Chey is leading the way for the exploration of the bio/pharmaceutical business. SK Holdings elevated SK BioTec, a grandchild contract manufacturing organization (CMF), to a subsidiary status, and invested 40 billion won in additional stock increase, essential for a plant in Chicago, the United States. The move is designed to help SK Holdings oversee the operation of the CMO.  

Chairman Chey’s pain-staking efforts in the pharmaceutical business have begun to bear fruit. SK Biophamaceutials has finished the Phase II clinical trial of its epilepsy drug. The company is now in Phase III of the trial process after receiving the IND application for ADX-N05 in the U.S., a potential treatment for narcolepsy. It has submitted an application to the U.S. FDA for approval of the new drug Plumiaz. The company will seek permission on the new drug from the U.S. FDA around 2018 if the trials are deemed to be successful.

SK Innovation’s Seosan plant in Chungcheongnam-do. (Photos:SK Group)