LS Cable & System (LS C&S) Chairman Koo Cha-yup. (Photos: LS C&S)

LS Cable & System (LS C&S) achieved the best performance in winning orders in five years from markets around the world, including Europe, the Middle East and Asia, last year.

The Korean cable maker saw sales soar to about 4 trillion won, the best one in five years. LS C&S’s best-ever performance was owed to the fact Chairman Koo Cha-yup’s efforts to restructure the business portfolio with a focus on core businesses and aggressively explore global markets have paid off.

Chairman Koo said his company plans to focus on the exploration of the ASEAN region this year.

According to cable business sources, the consolidated financial statement for 2018 showed that LS C&S surpassed 6.336 trillion won in accumulative overseas orders, the best performance by the cable maker since 2015. LS C&S’s accumulative winning orders dropped to 4,696 trillion won in 2016 due to rising raw materials prices and the sagging global economy. But that was reversed after 2017, and expectations mounted for a renewal as the cable maker chalked up 5.646 trillion won in the first nine months of last year.

 Chairman Koo has focused on his company’s core businesses with a competitive edge such as super voltage cables and submarine cable products and aggressive exploration of overseas markets since 2013 when he took office as chairman.

LS Cable & System Supplies High-Voltage Submarine Cables to Taiwan

LS Cable & System (LS C&S) is the first Korean wire and cable maker to supply super voltage submarine cables to Taiwan.

LS C&S signed a deal with Germany’s representative wind power company, wpd AG, to supply 170 km of 66KV submarine cables for an offshore wind power complex, to be built off Yulin County, west Taiwan.

Submarine cables are used to transmit power among wind power generators and between a power complex and a substation. For conventional wiring, 33KV cables are used for conventional wiring, but cables for supplying large amounts of power from 66kW are classified as super voltage cables.

LS C&S’s using 66kV cables to Asia’s first next-generation wind farm puts the Korean cable maker in a favorable position in the cable markets for new and renewable energy sectors such as wind farms.

LS C&S won a submarine cable order from Taiwan, emerging as a lucrative market by outbidding European and Japanese rivals. The Korean cable maker’s winning the order was owed to LS C&S, which have maintained close relationships with businesses by supplying cables to major wind farms in European countries such as UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium for the past 10 years.

LS C&S has an advantage in terms of technology, quality and delivery reliability.
The German company wpd AG, which has partnered with LS C&S, is a global leader, having built about 400 wind farms in Europe, North American and Asia.

The Taiwanese government plans to gradually construct large wind farms by 2030 and phase out the operation of nuclear power plants. The first phase project calls for investing $23 billion by 2020 to build wind power complexes with a combined capacity of 5.5GW. European companies, including wpd AG, are participating in wind power projects in Taiwan.

LS C&S President Myung Ro-hyun said, “The first phase of an offshore wind power complex in Taiwan is a blue ocean market with more than 2,000 km of submarine cables worth hundreds of billions of won.”

He said his company expected the winning of additional orders.
Earlier, LS C&S had a record of past achievements in supplying submarine cables to large-sized projects – a 225kV offshore wind farm in Belgium, a 230kV undersea power grid in New York and Vermont, a 150kW offshore wind power farm in the Netherlands, a 150kV offshore wind power complex in Westermost Rough, the UK.

An artist’s conception showing an undersea cable network to an off-shore win power complex in Taiwan.