SK IE Tech CEO Kim visits China to reinforce his MBWA management

SK IE Technology (SKIET) CEO Kim Cheol-jung is moving fast to secure growth opportunities for the company, as having domestic and overseas production bases checked consecutively.

SKIET announced on March 17 that Kim Cheol-jung, President of SK IE Technology, did his Management by wandering around (MBWA), including the visit to the battery separator factory located in Changzhou, China, from March 13 to 15, and a meeting with key local officials.

President Kim encouraged SKIET’s local members in China, who have had a difficult time due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, and also met with the local government officials to express gratitude for their interest and support for the company, and to secure continued cooperation

During his stay in China, President Kim came in contact with persons concerned, including Chen Jinhu (陈金虎), general-secretary of Changzhou where SKIET’s Chinese plant is located, and discussed ways for possible cooperation. After that, he went to SKIET’s Changzhou plant (Chinese) to inspect manufacturing lines on the site, and then communicated with members of the Chinese business site as a part of his MBWA efforts.

The Changzhou plant, the first overseas production base of SKIET, is one of the major global production bases for the corporation, along with the ones in Jeungpyeong (Korea) and Śląsk (Poland). Built with a battery separator manufacturing capacity of 670 million m2 per year, the plant has been supplying quality products to customers, and the amount of separators produced in the plant is equivalent to the ones needed for batteries used in around 950,000 electric vehicles.

President Kim, who took the helm of SKIET in December last year, identified the establishment of a global supply system as one of the essential tasks for securing competitive supremacy for the corporation. In January, he visited the Jeungpyeong plant in Chungbuk Province and the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, which is SK Innovation’s R&D center. He plans to visit the business site in Poland in the first half of this year to examine the European battery separator market and accelerate the expansion of sales by winning orders based on the global supply system.

President Kim stated, “SKIET needs to expand its customer portfolio by providing customers with comprehensive values created from its technology, cost competitiveness, and global supply system,” and he added, “In order to achieve essential tasks of the company, it will continuously strive to improve the competitiveness of the global production bases in China, Poland and more.”