Lotte Chemical Strengthens ESG Linkage

Investment in Eco-friendly High-value Materials with Three Pillars: Eco-friendly, Antivirus, and Mobility

Launch of Antiviral Plastic Products

The Only Domestic Bio-PET Production

Investment in Battery Separator Materials Also Planned

[Asia Economy Reporter Park So-yeon] Lotte Chemical is fostering eco-friendly, antiviral, and mobility material businesses to strengthen its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) competitiveness. Having focused on producing general-purpose products so far, Lotte Chemical is adopting a strategy of bold and active investment in high value-added products.

According to industry sources on the 8th, Lotte Chemical recently registered the trademark "everban" for antiviral materials. The company plans to launch antiviral plastic products using this trademark next year.

Since October, Lotte Chemical has been jointly developing antiviral materials with Korea University Medical Center. Due to the spread of COVID-19, it has become common to apply copper films with antiviral properties to elevator buttons.

Lotte Chemical plans to take a step further by producing plastics on which coronaviruses cannot survive and supplying them to the market. These can be applied in various fields including automobiles and home appliances. Earlier, in September, the company received international standard certification for antiviral processing products for the first time in the world by verifying antiviral performance against Influenza A virus in synthetic resin materials.

In the eco-friendly materials sector, Lotte Chemical will also strengthen its product business in bio-PET and recycled polypropylene. Lotte Chemical is the only domestic producer of bio-PET. Bio-PET is a product made using 30% sugarcane raw materials instead of petroleum. It emits 20% less carbon dioxide than conventional PET and is 100% recyclable. As preference for eco-friendly products increases, sales have surged sharply, showing rapid growth from 101 tons in 2017, 264 tons in 2018, to 1,528 tons in 2019. Sales from January to September this year reached 1,487 tons.

This year, Lotte Chemical also developed recycled polypropylene material applicable to cosmetic and food containers for the first time in Korea. This material is made by collecting used cosmetic containers from consumers, converting them into plastic raw materials, and then reprocessing them into recycled products. It is the first in Korea to complete U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) certification for use in cosmetic and food containers. Physical property tests have been completed with domestic and international cosmetic container manufacturers, and full-scale supply began in the fourth quarter of this year. As the domestic and international cosmetics industries are promoting policies to expand the use of recycled raw materials in cosmetic packaging to 50% by 2025, sales of this product are expected to increase.

The future mobility business, which Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin is emphasizing, will also be led by Lotte Chemical. Lotte announced a total investment plan of 50 trillion KRW by 2023, of which 40%, or 20 trillion KRW, will be invested in the domestic and overseas chemical industry. In particular, it is accelerating investment in the battery sector, a next-generation industry surpassing semiconductors. Lotte is enthusiastic about investing in separator materials used in electric vehicle batteries. Separators, one of the four core materials of batteries, are high value-added products with excellent insulation performance made from polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE), and Lotte Chemical mainly produces PE. Lotte Chemical plans to grow its separator business from the current annual production of 4,000 tons and sales of 10 billion KRW to 100,000 tons and 200 billion KRW by 2025. A Lotte Chemical official said, "We are currently carrying out additional facility improvements to expand the battery separator business, and we expect to complete these improvements and secure the planned production capacity by the first half of next year."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.