LG Group seeks future growth engines with new R&D units

LG Group, South Korea’s fourth-largest conglomerate, set up new research and development units at key affiliates to seek future growth engines that allow them to cope with the economic downturn.

Chairman Koo Kwang-mo emphasized the management focus on R&D in June, calling group executives to develop new technologies to enhance the competitiveness of products and services.

“Let’s implement more R&D to win the competition,” Koo said.

The group’s key affiliates such as LG Electronics Inc., the world’s top home appliance maker, established new R&D units for new businesses.

LG ELECTRONICS TO FOCUS ON VR, AR

LG Electronics recently founded an R&D center for extended reality (XR), which is a catch-all to refer to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), under the company’s chief technology officer, said industry sources on Monday.

The R&D center aims to secure new technologies and actively apply them to businesses. The XR technology is expected to be used not only for the manufacturing and healthcare sectors but also for new businesses such as the metaverse, according to those sources.

LG Electronics’ home appliances division set up a new R&D unit to improve competitiveness in power and electronics technologies, as well as parts.

In addition, the company expanded the existing raw material R&D center to upgrade the element quality of its key organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV.

TO IMPROVE BATTERY MATERIALS QUALITY

LG Chem Ltd., the parent company of the world’s No. 2 electric vehicle battery maker LG Energy Solution Ltd. established a new cell materials R&D unit. The center plans to enhance the R&D on the business for new battery materials such as cathodes.

The company has been so actively enhancing competitiveness in its battery materials business that it spent more than 1 trillion won ($765 million) on R&D for the sector and hired some 500 researchers.

The petrochemicals manufacturer’s bio division set up a unit that promotes cooperation among R&D centers for new drugs, product developments, as well as chemistry, manufacturing, and controls. The unit is also poised to enhance support for those centers.

LG Energy raised a patent team under the CTO to a center in order to systematically manage the increasing number of patents, which rose to more than 25,000 as of end-June. The battery maker is already operating technology centers for the pouch and cylindrical products, as well as electrodes.

TO HIRE MORE THAN 3,000 R&D PROFESSIONALS IN 3 YEARS

LG CNS Co., the country’s largest cloud computing service provider, in April opened a language artificial intelligence lab. The company has been working to upgrade AI with a vision AI lab, a data AI lab and an AI engineering lab.

The group reflected the R&D-oriented management in its annual executive reshuffle last month. R&D professionals made up 27% of the new 114 executives, raising the number of research expert executives to a record high of 196.

“We will hire more than 3,000 R&D professionals, more than 10% of the total recruitments, for the AI, software, big data, eco-friendly materials, batteries and other sectors in the next three years,” said a group official.

Write to Jeong-Soo Hwang at hjs@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.