SKC Appoints Park Won-cheol as New CEO... SK Nexilis Welcomes CEO Lee Jae-hong

SK Nexilis Appoints CEO Jaehong Lee
SK Solmix Appoints CEO Jongwoo Kim
Absolix Appoints CEO Junrok Oh
New Leadership Soars as Mobility Materials Companies

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] SKC is expanding its footprint as a mobility materials company under the leadership of CEO Park Won-cheol. Lee Jae-hong, Head of Management Support, was promoted to CEO of SK Nexilis, a copper foil manufacturing company acquired last year.

On the 1st, SKC held an extraordinary board meeting and announced the appointment of Park Won-cheol, Head of the New Business Team at SK Supex Council (Vice President), as the new CEO. Since his appointment in 2016, CEO Lee Wan-jae, who has led remarkable changes at SKC, will support SKC’s ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) management and new business initiatives with his accumulated management know-how.

CEO Park Won-cheol entered Seoul National University’s Department of Chemical Engineering, earned a Ph.D., and completed an MBA at the University of Chicago. He then worked at global consulting firm BCG (Boston Consulting Group), GS Energy, Hana Asset Management, and from 2018, has been a new business expert responsible for global growth and business discovery at SK Supex Council. He led SK Group’s global investments, including investments in Vietnam’s Masan Group and Vingroup, as well as Japan’s eco-friendly materials company TBM.

The SKC board judged CEO Park Won-cheol to be the right person to accelerate SKC’s growth through deep change. Since declaring 탈정 (?井), meaning “escaping the well,” in 2017, SKC has been pursuing deep change at a transformative level. In particular, SKC entered the secondary battery materials business by launching SK Nexilis in 2020 and achieved innovation by divesting stakes in SKC Kolon PI and SK Bioland.

During this period, SKC’s performance grew significantly. Operating profit, which was 149.3 billion KRW in 2016, recorded a cumulative 365.2 billion KRW by the third quarter of this year, surpassing 2.5 times the full-year operating profit of 2016. The operating profit for the third quarter alone was 145.8 billion KRW, setting a record for the highest quarterly profit. Considering the fourth quarter results, it is expected to exceed three times. External evaluations have also changed. As of November, SKC’s stock price reached the 200,000 KRW range, more than six times higher than in January 2016.

SKC is not stopping there and is pushing forward with a second deep change. At the ‘SKC Investor Day’ held in September, SKC presented its financial story as a future growth strategy and promised a new leap forward. The plan includes aggressively expanding production capacity of copper foil, a core material for secondary batteries, to 250,000 tons annually by 2025 to become the overwhelming number one player, and entering next-generation materials businesses such as silicon anode materials and glass substrates for high-performance computing.

Since then, SKC has been announcing investment plans one after another, executing the financial story as planned. In October, it decided to invest in glass substrates for high-performance computing, and in November, it decided on investments in silicon anode materials and expansion plans for the Polish copper foil plant. To secure the necessary funds, SKC signed a financial cooperation agreement worth 1.5 trillion KRW with the Korea Development Bank.

Meanwhile, Lee Jae-hong, Head of Management Support at SK Nexilis, was appointed CEO of SK Nexilis, and Kim Jong-woo, Head of BM Innovation Promotion Team at SKC, was appointed CEO of SKC Solmix. Oh Jun-rok, CEO of SKC Solmix, was appointed CEO of Absolix, which is promoting the glass substrate business.

An SKC official said, "CEO Park Won-cheol and SKC members will not only achieve the promised goals but also strengthen ESG management to transform the company into one that changes the world with sustainable value."