Lotte Wellfood Establishes 'Innovation Promotion Team' and Appoints Seongho Seo as Head

Management Reform Aimed at Improving Profitability and Driving Future Growth

Lotte Wellfood has established an 'Innovation Promotion Team' to improve profitability and drive future growth, appointing an executive at the vice president level from outside the company as the head of the team.

Seongho Seo, Head of Innovation Promotion Team at Lotte Wellfood
[Photo by Lotte Wellfood]

According to the food industry on June 30, Lotte Wellfood has formed the Innovation Promotion Team, which reports directly to the CEO. Seongho Seo, who is known as a management innovation expert and previously served as Vice President at Hankook & Company, has been appointed as the head of the team. His term begins on July 1.

Born in 1969, Vice President Seo began his career as an engineer at General Motors (GM) in the United States, later serving as Head of Planning Group at Samsung Corning Precision Materials and Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Doosan Solus. In 2021, he joined Hankook & Company as Vice President, where he led future strategy development and new business initiatives.

Lotte Wellfood stated that the Innovation Promotion Team was established to proactively respond to increasingly challenging business conditions, including rapidly changing external environments. A Lotte Wellfood representative explained, "We formed the Innovation Promotion Team to seek more fundamental and long-term profitability improvement measures, beyond short-term effects through cost reduction," adding, "We will examine all aspects of management."

Previously, in April, Lotte Wellfood implemented a voluntary retirement program under Lotte Group's emergency management system. Last year, Lotte Wellfood's consolidated sales amounted to 4.0443 trillion won, down from 4.0664 trillion won the previous year, and operating profit fell by more than 11% to 157.1 billion won. Due to cost pressures from rising cacao prices, operating profit for the first quarter of this year also dropped by 56.1% year-on-year to 16.4 billion won.

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