Chairman Park Jung-won visits a Doosan Robotics plant in Suwan near Seoul, with Vice Chairman Park Ji-won on Dec. 19, 2017, to be briefed on the affilates operation. (Photo: Doosan Group)

Doosan Group has decided to continue to explore high-tech areas to further diversify its product portfolio, picking up fuel battery and robotics to add to its existing product line to strengthen its global competitiveness.

Doosan Robotics was launched in 2015 as the group wasted no time in making its presence felt in the age of the 4th Industrial Revolution. The new affiliate so far succeeded in the development of robotics technologies leading to the production of four robotics models. The company is producing robotics at a plant it set up in last December Suwon, Geyonggi Province.

The group also entered the fuel battery business in 2014. It completed its entry into the new business with total booked orders amounting to 1 trillion won as of the end of 2016. In May, last year, the company put online its fuel battery plant in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, the largest in the country, with an annual capacity to turn out 63 Mw of new batteries.

Doosan Infracore, another affiliate of the group, shared 3.8 percent of the global construction machinery market coming in at the 6th, thanks to its market share in the Chinese construction market at 8.3 percent as of November last year, one of the largest in the world, up 0.9 percent YoY.

The company has also been strengthening its sales network in emerging market countries with the weight of the network rising to 93 percent in 2016 from 82 percent in 2012.

Doosan Heavy Industries has been developing a new gas turbine engine in line with the government’s new policies on environmentally friendly energy, which the company plans to complete in the next three years, including tests before its commercialization in 2021.

Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction owns core technologies and ongoing performance with the three core components of the power generation business - boilers, turbines and generators. Doosan is also making substantial inroads into the eco-friendly power generation business including wind power, ESS (Energy Storage System) and microgrid.

Doosan Infracore has signed a joint venture (JV) agreement with Lovol Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (Lovol), the biggest agricultural machinery manufacturer in China.

The two companies will make a 50:50 investment in the joint venture with a focus on Doosan Infracore's accumulated engine technologies and mass-production know-how and Lovol's production facilities and local business competency. The JV will be set up in China under the name ‘Lovol Doosan’ at the beginning of 2018.

Lovol Doosan will produce the G2 Engine, an eco-friendly high-efficiency compact engine that Doosan Infracore has developed on its own, after adapting it to local requirements including China’s GHG emissions standards, and will supply it for the agricultural equipment manufactured by Lovol, among other clients. The JV aims to actively seek entry to other emerging markets with emissions standards similar to those of China, as well as to expand into the engine market for the Chinese power generation and construction equipment industries.

"By establishing this joint venture, we will be able to secure the world's largest consumer of our agricultural machinery engines while, in the long term, we will be able to enjoy the same effect as setting up a G2 engine plant in China,” an official from Doosan Infracore said. “The JV will serve as a springboard for the growth of our engine business and generate higher profits in emerging markets including China."

In June 2017, Doosan Infracore signed a long-term engine supply contract with KION GROUP AG of Germany, the world's second largest forklift manufacturer. 

And, just one month later, the Company successfully entered the Vietnamese bus engine market by supplying its bus engines to four Vietnamese commercial vehicle manufacturers.