GS Caltex said Wednesday it has recently unveiled a 6-minute-long video on YouTube that shows the essence of company’s 53 years of history.

Titled “Energy Plus Journey,” the clip chronicles the company’s beginning as the nation’s first private oil company in 1967 and the journey it took to become today’s energy giant.

The video, created with an aim of sharing GS Caltex’s vision with a global audience, supports 10 languages including Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian and Spanish.

It starts with a series of black-and-white images that capture historic moments of the company: the building of a crude oil storage tank in 1967, the Yeosu refinery in 1969, its first highway gas station in 1973 and so on.

It then moves on to show how the company became the world’s fourth largest single-site oil refinery, through raising its competitiveness in the aromatics and polymer businesses and launching a global lubricant brand Kixx and operating some 2,800 gas stations.

The last part highlights the company’s response to the global transition to green energy, showing its first hydrogen charging station that opened in May in Gangdong-gu, eastern Seoul and its first pump station opened in November in Seocho-gu, Seoul that offers rapid charging services to electric vehicles.

At the CES held this month, the company offered a glimpse into the future of gas stations with its new brand “Energy Plus Hub,” envisioning them as a logistics hub for drone deliveries.

The video also emphasizes GS Caltex’s push for eco-friendly raw materials. The company is currently recycling waste plastic to produce compounded resin, a functional plastic widely used as a raw material for automotive and home appliance parts. It’s 2,3-butanediol, a raw material for cosmetics and personal care products, is made of nongenetically modified biomass such as cassava and sugarcane instead of oil-based substances. Thanks to the growing demand for eco-friendly materials, the company witnessed a 1,000 percent jump in biobutanol sales in the first 11 months of last year from a year prior.

By Kim Byung-wook (kbw@heraldcorp.com)