S.Korea's battery industry looks for staff fluent in European languages

South Korea's battery companies are seeking human resources fluent in the languages and familiar with the cultures of countries where plants are located or being built, considering such abilities as crucial for running the facilities after their completion.

Industry sources on Thursday said EcoPro Group, South Korea's largest cathode material company, since late last year has specified fluency in Hungarian as a preferred qualification when recruiting staff. EcoPro BM Co., the conglomerate's cathode material subsidiary, is building a plant with an investment of 970 billion won ($753 million) in Hungary's second-largest city of Debrecen.

The company's first factory in the Eastern European country will go online in the second half of next year and its second in the latter half of 2025.

To run a factory abroad, hiring personnel there is crucial. A significant number of staff from South Korea must be deployed to manage such workers and plants as well as to conduct sales and marketing, and this is why EcoPro Group said it needs human resources who can speak Hungarian.

On Feb. 10, it signed an accord on industry-academia business cooperation with the Hungarian department of the Global Campus at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, to recruit Hungarian-fluent staff.

POSCO Chemical is building a cathode material plant with American carmaker General Motors in Becancour, a city in the Canadian province of Quebec, with completion slated for next year. POSCO Chemical lists fluency in French as a preferred qualification when hiring for the factory given that Quebec residents speak more French than English.

"Unlike English, there is a limit to learning something quickly over a short time, so we need personnel fluent in French," a POSCO Chemical source said.

EcoPro BM, which is planning to build a cathode material plant in Quebec, is also known to be recruiting many French-speaking staff soon.

LG Energy Solution Ltd., which runs a battery factory in Poland, prefers candidates fluent in Polish and German when hiring business and planning personnel for the facility. POSCO Holdings Inc. recruits Spanish-speaking candidates throughout the year for its lithium business in Argentina.

Write to Kyung-Min Kang at kkm1026@hankyung.com