S-Oil said Monday it has made the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices World, the list of world’s most sustainable companies, this year. According to the South Korean refinery, it has been included in the DJSI World list for 11 consecutive years. In the Oil & Gas category, S-Oil is the first and the only refinery in the Asia-Pacific region to be included on the list for 11 years straight, the company said. Co-operated by global index providers S&P Dow Jones Indices and RobecoSAM,

LG Chem recently announced its new corporate social responsibility slogan, “Green Connector,” in response to global climate change and is focusing its efforts on four major fields: ecology, education, energy and the economy. To boost its corporate social responsibility activities for ecology, the South Korean chemical-to-battery giant joined hands with the Korean Federation for Environmental Movements last month, forming a team of 20 university students and supporting them in stu

LG Electronics said Monday it has ramped up the production of its organic light-emitting diode TVs in Mexico by more than 30 percent to respond to a surge in demand anticipated for the upcoming holidays. According to the South Korean consumer electronics giant, its OLED TV plant in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Northeastern Mexico, has increased its production by more than 30 percent to prepare for Black Friday and Christmas season. All OLED TVs manufactured in the Reynosa plant are shipped througho

For someone who doesn’t understand games, NCSoft’s Fuser might seem like just another rhythm game. But for those more familiar, they’ll notice that Fuser is the South Korean game industry’s bold knock on the door of the Western console gaming market. For too long NCSoft has relied on its 12-year-old role-playing Lineage series PC games, which took up 85 percent of its revenue in the first quarter of this year. At a time when change was desperately needed, NCSoft h

JEONGEUP, North Jeolla Province -- On a cold, grey cement floor lay four rows of giant circular lids that could easily measure 5 meters in diameter. The only things moving inside the shabby, dimly-lit warehouse were plastic fans ventilating the facility, which was lit by sunlight coming through the square window panes right beneath the high-rise ceiling. The scene almost looked like a giant whack-a-mole machine. But who could have imagined that under those enormous lids was the molten for

Hyundai Motor Group said Tuesday it will mount Nvidia’s computer chips on all Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Genesis models starting from 2022 to help those vehicles process large amounts of real-time data. According to the world’s fifth-largest automotive group, Nvidia Drive chips will be installed in all vehicles to provide improved computing power required for running the connected car operating system, or ccOS, developed by Hyundai Motor. Hyundai’s ccOS allows vehicles t

SK IE Technology, a wholly owned electric vehicle battery material subsidiary under SK Innovation, began the operation of a separator factory recently completed in Changzhou, China, the company said Tuesday. Equipped with an annual production capacity of 340 million square meters, the new plant will ramp up SKIET’s total capacity to 870 million square meters. When additional plants are completed in Poland and China, the figure will spike to 1.87 billion square meters by 2023. Separat

GS Engineering & Construction has opened a new highway that connects Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, a satellite city just northwest of Seoul, and Munsan, a town within the border city of Paju, Gyeonggi Province, the company said Sunday. A total of 2.1 trillion won ($1.87 billion) was poured into the Seoul-Munsan Expressway, after it broke ground in November 2015. The highway is 35.2 kilometers long, ranging from two to six lanes. The Seoul-Munsan highway is expected to reduce traffic in th

Industries are guaging the prospects of their US businesses under US President-elect Joe Biden, and South Korean refineries and petrochemical companies are among them. The sticking points are whether Biden’s anti-fracking policy and renewable energy push will actually impact the global price of oil and their businesses. “Biden’s limit on fracking will curb the production and supply of shale oil and gas. But regardless of Biden’s anti-fracking policy, demand on oil w

Korea Power Corp. on Sunday released its annual sustainability report, which highlighted the state-run utility’s plan to reduce or suspend its coal-fired power plant projects at home and abroad in the future. The release came amid mounting criticism from environmental and investment groups over Kepco’s double-sided business practices -- conducting solar and wind power projects at home in lock step with President Moon Jae-in’s Green New Deal initiative while pursuing coal-fi

The date of the final ruling for the battery patent lawsuit SK Innovation filed against LG Chem with the US International Trade Commission has been set for Nov. 30 of next year, according to industry sources on Thursday. In September last year, SK Innovation sued LG Chem for allegedly violating its 994 patent. LG Chem argues that SK Innovation’s 994 patent registered in 2015 was actually based on LG Chem’s A7 battery cell developed in 2013, and that the A7 battery cell was used i

The government said Wednesday it has called for Vietnam to conduct a fair and objective investigation into an anti-dumping case related to high-fructose corn syrup from Korea and pledged to discuss “essential facts” with the country before a final decision is made. Essential facts are crucial facts that form the basis of the investigating authority’s decision to apply anti-dumping duties. According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, it held a video conference

Korea Power Corp. said Wednesday that it has become the first South Korean energy company to issue environmental, social and governance bonds worth 200 billion won ($176 million) for two consecutive years. According to the state-run utility, the bonds comprise two-year bonds worth 30 billion won, three-year bonds worth 100 billion won and five-year bonds worth 70 billion won. “Kepco issued the ESG bonds at the lowest interest rate out of all ESG bonds that have been issued by public

S-Oil has installed its second single point mooring unit in Ulsan, a loading buoy anchored offshore that allows tankers to offload their crude oil via pipeline to the refineries, the company said Tuesday. According to the South Korean refinery, the SPM unit, the second one at the company’s Ulsan plant, began its operation Tuesday. Installed in the waters off Ulsan New Port, the SPM unit is equipped with mooring equipment that can hold fast tankers and is connected with 44-inch diamet

SKC on Tuesday announced an earnings surprise for the third quarter of this year, recording a revenue of 723.7 billion won ($637.1 million) and an operating profit of 55.3 billion won, the largest-ever operating profit since 2015. According to the chemical and tech material producing unit under South Korean conglomerate SK Group, it saw a 19.7 percent and a 44 percent jump in revenue and operating profit on-year, respectively, thanks to its business model centered on mobility and semiconducto

The recent recall of Hyundai Motor’s Kona electric vehicle is shining a spotlight on separators, one of the four key components of EV batteries along with cathodes, anodes and electrolytes. Separators are basically thin walls with tiny holes that divide cathodes from anodes. When batteries are charged and discharged, ions go back and forth between cathodes and anodes through these tiny holes. Separators prevent cathodes and anodes from reacting to each other and triggering short circui

Korea Power Corp. said Monday it has launched a special task force dedicated to tackling structural and systemic constraints that keep South Korea’s burgeoning renewable energy industry from growing. According to the state-run utility, it will construct power grids preemptively in regions where renewable energy facilities are expected to be built, including Shinan and Yeonggwang in South Jeolla Province. Since October 2016, Kepco has initiated a policy that guarantees access to power

Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI said Friday that they have begun training more than 1,500 miners from 12 mining cooperatives in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo, this month to supply cobalt in a more environmentally friendly manner. The project, “Cobalt for Development,” also aims to promote safe working conditions and the well-being of local communities. Through the project -- a cross-industry initiative of Samsung Electronics, Samsung SDI, BMW, BASF and Volkswagen -- th

LG Chem’s plan to split off its battery business received final approval at a shareholders meeting at the LG Twin Towers in Yeouido, western Seoul, Friday. The split-off required support from at least two-thirds of all shareholders in attendance, who had to possess at least one-third of all shares issued. “About 77.5 of shareholders participated in the meeting and 82.3 of them voted yes. Also, the split-off earned support from 63.7 percent of total shares,” an LG Chem offi

PRINCIPAL AWARDS/ GOLD PRIZE GS CALTEX By Lee Sang-hun Vice president of Public Relations  First, I feel grateful to receive the gold prize for this year’s The Korea Herald Advertising Awards and there is no doubt that this would become a great energy for GS Caltex to carry out its communication activities in the future. In 2009, GS Caltex set its corporate brand image as “Energy for sustainable life” and developed “I am your Energy” as a brand slogan to