SK Group Chairman Chey Tai-won gives a speech at a ceremony to kick off the 2019 business year at the Walker Hill Hotel in Seoul on Jan. 2. (Photo: SK Group)

“In the past 20 years, SK Group has achieved a 200-fold growth in profit, but (we’re) still settling for the status quo, and a fundamental change is needed for sustainable growth in an era of ‘sudden death’ with an uncertain future,” SK Group Chairman Chey Tai-won said.

In his New Year message, Chairman Chey said, “Each business needs fundamental change for survival and growth.” The message communicates a sense of a crisis for SK in which fixed ideas cannot cope with business environment changes in the case of maintaining conventional businesses.

SK Group wants each subsidiary to innovate business models to secure growth engines this year.

Five business areas SK is focusing on are semiconductor/materials, new energy industry, health care, next-generation ICT, and future mobility. To this end, the business group announced a plan to plunk down 80 trillion won over the next three years.

The group plans to strengthen global competitiveness in the memory semiconductor sector through continued technology and facility investments in the years to come and making semiconductors, the nation’s no. 1 export item, contribute to the development of the national economy.

SK plans to reduce its overseas dependence on core semiconductor materials and build a stable self-sufficiency regime. The group plans to expand investments in new energy sectors such as liquefied natural gas, photovoltaic power, and other eco-friendly new and renewable energy areas. It plans to nurture an intelligent power system business arena through convergence with ICT in order to reduce energy consumption and promote efficiency.

In the health care sector, SK plans to focus on global market entries of premium vaccines such as influenza and pneumonia. The group strives to secure global competitiveness in the prescription medicines. In the next-generation ICT sector, SK tries to take the lead in building 5G network infrastructure that will expedite the 4th Industrial Revolution, and seeks to create new business models using technologies such as IoT.

 
In the future mobility sector, SK plans to lead industries related to self-driving using new technologies such as AI, 5G, and cloud and expand investments in the battery business to spread the supply of EVs.

In 2017, SK Corp. entered the global car sharing business by investing in the U.S. P2P car sharing company Turo. In January 2018, the company inaugurated SoCar Malaysia, a joint venture with SoCar to launch the nation’s largest car sharing business.

SK Innovation is making a massive investment in the battery and information electronics businesses. In the first half of last year, the company launched a project to build a Hungary-based battery plant and mass-produce barriers starting in early 2020 to enter the European market.

The company also announced a plan to build a global battery supply network with a battery joint venture in China, and a battery plant in Georgia, the United States. SK Innovation is expanding facilities to secure leadership in the lithium-ion battery separator market.

All subsidiaries are aware of the crisis stemming from the rapidly changing business environment, and they will make efforts to explore new growth engines this year, SK Group officials said.