Coupang to invest $4.7 billion in supply chains in Korea over 12 years

 

South Korea's e-commerce giant Coupang has briefed US Ambassador to Seoul Philip Goldberg at the company's fulfillment center in Daegu, a facility completed in March in the country's fourth-largest city, on the company's creation of domestic supply chains.

Opened in 2010, Coupang over the past 12 years has built a logistics network spanning 30 regions nationwide.

The company on Wednesday invited to the center the ambassador and officials from the Ministry of Science and ICT for a presentation, announcing cumulative investment of 6.2 trillion won ($4.7 billion) to build its supply chain network in Korea since Coupang's launch.

Built with an investment of 300 billion won, the center boasts state-of-the-art logistics equipment such as artificial intelligence (AI) and logistics robots in an area the size of 46 soccer fields. Coupang said the facility will directly employ 2,500 staff and the direct and indirect job-creating effect will eventually lead to 10,000 employees.

Coupang said its investment in Korea last year was an estimated $1.2 billion, nearly half of US foreign direct investment in the country of $2.47 billion. The company also directly hired over 60,000 staff over the past two years.

Ambassador Goldberg said the Korean-US alliance has rapidly developed into a global technological and economic partnership, with Coupang a leading case study of this evolution.

Coupang Chairman and CEO Kang Han-seung said, "Coupang's logistics site is transforming into a cutting-edge digital technological venue combining AI algorithms and automated robotic technology," adding, "Coupang's technological investment is significant for shattering the conventional wisdom that it leads to lower employment, and has instead created jobs and revived the regional economy."

For the first time since 2014, when Coupang launched its core shipping service Rocket Delivery, the company saw a quarterly surplus in the third quarter. Operating profit in the quarter reached 103.7 billion won based on the quarterly average of the won-dollar rate of 1,340.5, and sales reached a record-high 6.8 trillion won. 

Write to Jong-Kwan Park at pjk@hankyung.com