Chairman Park Jeong-won of Doosan Group. (Photo: Doosan Group)

Under the stewardship of Chairman Park Jeong-won, Doosan Group has kicked off a scheme to nurture its fuel cell and battery foil businesses into a “the 1 trillion won sales club.”

Doosan Corp., the holding company of the group, has spun off its fuel cell and secondary battery foil businesses. Doosan Fuel Cell and Doosan Solus were inaugurated on Oct. 1.

Doosan Group is accelerating efforts to foster fuel cell and secondary battery foil businesses, as Chairman Park said in his New Year’s message. At that time, Chairman Park stressed that the fuel cell business needs to expand the market, while the battery foil business should rise to Doosan Group’s new growth engine.

Doosan Group is confident it can establish the new businesses as leading companies.

Doosan Fuel Cell specializes in fuel cell for power generation, which is part of the “hydrogen economy” axis the government has been pushing. Doosan Solus specializes in the battery foil as its mainstay business, which is growing fast along with the booming global electric vehicle market.

Doosan Fuel Cell has teamed up with Hyundai Motor to collaborate on a hydrogen-based microgrid demonstration project, designed to create an independent hydrogen fuel cell energy network.

The deal calls for the development of new business models to distribute the generation of hydrogen fuel cells and demonstrate a hydrogen-based generation system that can respond to fluctuating loads.

Hyundai Motor will create polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), while Doosan Fuel Cell will make phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFC). Distributed power generation, a method of generating and supply electricity near power consumption areas, is an option to fix problems of the conventional new and renewal energies such as unstable power grids and power transmission and distribution network expansion.

Chairman Park’s establishment of Doosan Fuel Cell and Doosan Solus as separate entities may take on significance.

The move may be construed as Doosan Group’s scheme to make another leap forward by cultivating eco-friendly businesses, departing from losses the group has suffered from the government’s energy paradigm shift to wean the nation off nuclear power generation.

Under the stewardship of Chairman Park, who took office as chairman of the group in 2016, the move may herald an “Chairman Park’s Era” as projects to invest future businesses have begun to bear fruit.

Doosan Group is upbeat about the newly established entities. In a recent IR session, the group said Doosan Fuel Cell and Doosan Solus aim to raise sails to 9 trillion won in 2023, more than twice 4.2 trillion won this year in a consolidated financial statement.

Doosan Vice Chairman Dong Hyun-soo said the conventional and new businesses are expected to accelerate growth through the timely spin-off. Doosan Fuel Cell targets to raise sales from power generation fuel cell equipment and service businesses from an estimated 469 billion won this year to 1 trillion won by 2023.

Doosan Fuel Cell saw the value of winning orders surpass 1 trillion won for the first time in three years after the company entered the market as it landed an order to build a by-product hydrogen power generation plant from the Daesan Plant of Hanwha, the largest-ever one in the world, last year.

In 2014, Doosan Corp. inaugurated the fuel cell business division as the holding company of the group acquired Clean Energy Power (CEP) of the Unites States.

Chairman Park extended a helping hand to the fuel cell business as he built a fuel cell production plant on a lot covering about 11,000 sq. meters in Iksan, Jeollabuk-do, in May 2017.

The Korean power generation fuel cell market is predicted to maintain an explosive growth with an annual average growth rate of more than 20 percent by 2040, a Doosan Group official said.

Doosan Solus aims to raise sales in the battery foil and OLED and other advanced material businesses from about 260 billion won this to 1 trillion won by 2023.