A group of execs and staff are seen at Samchully Group’s 64th anniversary celebration on Sept. 30.(Photos:Samchully Group)

President Yi Eun-back of the Samchully Group U.S. Headquarters.

Samchully Group promoted Vice President of Yi Eun-baek of its U.S. headquarters to president in a Dec. 5 reshuffle of key executives at affiliate companies.

The move was part of its plan to boost the operation of its U.S. setup and prepare for the eventual management takeover by the third generation of its founder Yi Jang-kyun. The group also launched the Future Business Headquarters.

President Yi is a grandson of the founder of the group and a nephew of Honorary Chairman Yi Man-deuk of the group. The honorary chairman took over the management of the group from his brother Chairman Yi Chun-deuk when he died in 1987. The honorary chairman has only three daughters with no stakes in the group.

Many said Yi’s promotion has to do with the group’s plan to expand its U.S. operation. The group now operates a Japanese restaurant Lobata and Courtyard By Marriot hotel in Anaheim, California.

The group posted 3.458,1 trillion won in sales in 2018 operating the city gas supply.

On Oct. 1, 1955, Honorary Chairman Yoo Seong-yeon and Yi Jang-kyun founded together the ‘Samchully Briquette Industry’ with the plan to sweep over the whole peninsula of Korea with our products.

The two co-founders led a sustainable briquette business, developing its unique brand and high quality briquettes under a mind for partnership and harmony.

Samchully is implementing action plans to realize its vision of ‘Samchully - Shaping the Future from Energy to Environment.’

“This vision calls for efforts to enhance the quality of life of our customers, improve the overall happiness of constituents, and boost corporate value for shareholders by creating an eco-friendly life and culture centered on energy, which provides customers with essential value and serves as our primary engine of business growth,” according to Samchully.

“All the while, we will focus on environmental measures for the welfare of people and to sustain our business activities.”

To realize its corporate vision, Samchully is forging ahead with ‘eco-friendly energy’ business activities, related to city gas distribution, power generation, and integrated energy supply, as well as ‘eco-friendly green growth’ ventures that include new & renewable energy, water and ESCO.

“We are also diversifying into the ‘life & culture’ with financial services and restaurant business,” the group said.

Global competition in the energy industry has been growing increasingly since the late 1980s.

And as a result, world’s leading nations are rapidly preparing an energy war, which is expected to grow together, through restructuring, privatization and establishment of customer satisfaction supply structure with the integration of energy industry (Multi-Fuel).

And in the domestic market, the market structure is shifting to a competitive market environment from the state-run monopoly and oligopoly.

There will be more business opportunities for gas retailers due to opening the market to the private companies. “As one of the best company in gas market, we are preparing to expand our sales to the global market.

With our new vision for the future ‘integrated energy specialized company’, we are promoting vertical and horizontal business diversification, which will enable us to maximize synergy effects with city gas retail business,” Samchully said.

Through adapting the global trend of supplying one-stop service by integration of energy sources such as gas, electricity and heat, the company says it will supply optimally integrated service.

“We hope that we can contribute to make each family happy and furthermore the advancement of Korea’s economy.”