SKC mulls investment in materials in Haiphong, Vietnam

South Korea's SKC has teamed up with Haiphong, a key industrial city in northeastern Vietnam, to reinforce the company's basis for global expansion in Southeast Asia.

SKC on Monday said it signed at its Seoul headquarters a comprehensive agreement on eco-friendly and high-tech materials with the Vietnamese city.

Based on the accord, SKC will review investment in the sector for such materials in Haiphong in stages.

The city government will offer full support in areas such as electricity and environmental infrastructure if SKC decides to invest, not to mention efforts to attract incentives from Vietnam's central government.

One of the Southeast Asian nation's five centrally governed cities along with the capital Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh in the south, Haiphong has the country's biggest port and is a national industrial hub.

Attracting South Korean corporate investment worth an estimated $10 billion, Haiphong has a strategy to rise as a sustainable industrial base by attracting new high value-added materials industries with high technology and eco-friendliness.

The agreement also enables SKC to boost its investment in Southeast Asia, one of the pillars of the company's global expansion, by securing an investment base in Vietnam following the slated completion of its copper foil plant in Malaysia this year.

To enter Southeast Asia, SKC in 2021 began construction of the Malaysian plant in Kota Kinabalu with annual capacity of about 50,000 tons through its copper foil affiliate SK Nexilis, an investor in the material used for secondary batteries. The facility is slated for completion by the second half of this year and mass production will follow.

"Vietnam is receiving the spotlight as a global corporate base because of its excellent infrastructure,” an SKC source said. "Haiphong has outstanding accessibility and thus boasts considerable advantages as an investment region for future global expansion."

Write to Ik-Hwan Kim at lovepen@hankyung.com