SK Innovation is stepping forward for “win-win cooperation with partner companies.” Advancing into the batteries and materials business construction sites, it is expanding globally in the United States, China, and Europe, among others, with small and mid-sized enterprise (SME) Korean partners specializing in plants.

At the same time, the company plans to support the partners in various ways, such as providing training and holding briefings to achieve win-win growth.

The win-win cooperation model that SK Innovation is pursuing with its partners is drawing great attention, because it involves advancing into the global market mainly with Korean SME partners. Until now, large construction companies have worked on the construction of batteries and materials facilities from their design to their construction because of the short construction period, and only a few companies possess the experience designing such factories given the nature of the industry. As such, it was an environment wherein SMEs could not possibly even have the opportunity to participate in such projects.

SK Innovation focused on the fact that partner SMEs with high growth potential or those equipped with the relevant technologies must be fostered to develop a value chain. It believed that this could be achieved only by encouraging healthy competition and expanding the Korean batteries and materials industry ecosystem.

For instance, SK Innovation signed a contract for the design of its United States factory’s construction worth approximately KRW 9 billion with MAP HANTERIN A&E, a company specializing in servicing designs, in April this year. The SME has no experience whatsoever designing a battery factory, but it is known to possess excellent technological competency in designing industrial plants. Its design capability has thus been acknowledged that it is expecting a final design service contract for the new construction of Factory 2 in Hungary, which SK Innovation announced last February.

▲ Aerial view (left) of the factory in Komárom (Factory 1), Hungary, that SK Innovation is currently constructing and the lot for the factory in Georgia, United States (right)

SK Innovation is thus discovering SMEs that had difficulty obtaining the opportunity to participate in battery factory constructions despite possessing excellent technological competencies. It is fostering such SMEs for them to become globally competitive by providing the opportunity to experience designing numerous battery factories overseas.

SK IE Technology, which separated from SK Innovation last April, is also currently deliberating to sign a contract with SME partners for the design of its lithium-ion battery separator (LiBS) factory being constructed in Changzhou, China.

SK Innovation has come to possess global competitiveness in the batteries and materials businesses, thanks to its partners who have worked hard to design, construct, maintain, and repair the best factories. As such, it is devising various measures for win-win growth with competitive SME partners with which it is collaborating.

SK Innovation plans to discover SME partners with excellent technological competencies for not only the design but also the construction, maintenance, and repair of its factories to simultaneously pursue social and economic values based on its philosophy of Double Bottom Line (DBL)*.

(*) DBL: SK’s management philosophy of simultaneously pursuing both economic and social values

SK Innovation has experience successfully advancing into the global market with partners already early on. In 2011, SK energy participated with partners specializing in facilities, in an operation and maintenance (O&M) project for the regular repairs of the Binh Son Refinery in Vietnam, thereby helping them advance into a foreign market. It was indeed a great opportunity from the viewpoint of the partners because their businesses were mainly limited to the Korean market until then, and they could devise business targeting the world for the first time.

SK Innovation has been also providing diverse training to improve the competency of the partners’ staff in fields such as quality, safety, health, and environment (SHE). It is equally financially supporting them by operating win-win growth funds, paying in advance, and shortening the settlement days as part of its policy to grow with SMEs.

In addition, it regularly holds seminars with partners annually and meetings irregularly to devise win-win growth measures. In particular, it plans to expand online and off-line windows for communication with its partners starting this year to actively help solve their problems.