LS C&S Chairman Koo Cha-yub

LS Cable & System (LS C&S) will be the first Korean cable maker to enter the Brazilian undersea cable market.

LS C&S recently signed a contract with Brazilian power grid operator ISA CTEEP to supply 100 km of extra-high voltage undersea and underground cables to Santa Cantarina, a resort island in southern Brazil. ISA CTEEP is responsible for 25 percent of Brazil's total power transmission and 60 percent of total power transmission in the southeastern region.

LS C&S was given more favorable assessments in the bidding process in recognition of the company’s successful implementing of off-shore wind power complexes in the United States and large-sized undersea power grid projects in Canada, Venezuela, and other North and South American countries.

Brazil’s power grid networks are obsolete, and Brazil depends on hydro power in rivers such as the Amazon and the Parana for 60 percent of the South American country’s power generation, so droughts have caused power shortage problems. The outlook of the Brazilian power generation market is rosy as the Brazilian government intends to diversify its power generation portfolio to wind power, photovoltaic power, and other energies.

LS C&S President Myung Roe-hyun said LS C&S’s first supply of undersea cables o Brazil laid a foundation to expand its presence in the Brazilian market. LS C&S will aggressively explore ways of entering neighboring countries in cooperation with ISA CTEEP whose largest shareholder is a Colombian power company, he added.

It was in 2007 that LS C&S succeeded in the development of cables for the first time in Korea.

In 2012, the cable company won a $435 million cable contract from Qatar’s state-run petroleum company, the largest-ever one landed by a Korean cable maker. LS C&S has been accelerating efforts to enter European, North and South American markets, once European cable makers’ business turf, as the company has since landed large-sized orders from such countries as Venezuela, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada.

Undersea cables are high-tech cable products being installed to offer power and communications connection between two locations isolated by sea. Demand on undersea cables is on a constant rise countries are scrambling for building offshore wind power complex, national power grid networks and launching off-shore oil and gas development projects.

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 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.

Employees with LS C&S look at cables produced by the company. (Photos: LS C&S)