This month, LG CEO Cho visited the company’s key production bases in Asia, including Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, directly looking into key factors of operational advancement strategies, such as quality enhancement, supply chain, cost structure improvement, safety and productivity of vehicle components, home appliances and TVs. Ultimately, the company aims to strengthen competitiveness and growth in key business areas and global markets.
“Let’s further strengthen our market dominance and solidify the foundation for sustainable growth by upgrading our locally-optimized operation methods and providing world-class quality, cost competitiveness and reliable delivery to our customers,” said CEO Cho. “We should look to pioneer future markets with our unmatched innovation and ability to overcome challenges, while holding firm to the belief that opportunities come from delivering exceptional customer experiences.”
The CEO began his Asian tour in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he was joined by the heads of LG’s Asian subsidiaries for a management meeting. There, he was briefed on the company’s regional performance and discussed the status of individual markets including Vietnam, which serves as a global production base for LG’s electronic devices and home appliances. He also had in-depth talks with the subsidiary heads on a variety of business matters, such as improving production efficiency, verifying mass production processes for new products, enhancing quality control and boosting growth through mutually beneficial partnerships.Departing Vietnam, CEO Cho headed to Thailand to visit the Rayong factory and its home appliance production lines. Next, he traveled to Jakarta, Indonesia to inspect LG’s Cibitung plant, which has become a major TV production base for the company’s premium product lineups, including LG OLED TVs. After Jakarta, the CEO made a stop in the city of Tangerang, meeting staff and looking over facilities at the local LG plant, which focuses primarily on refrigerator production.
“Our Vietnam and Indonesia subsidiaries now form a complete business structure, having recently added a local R&D subsidiary to the production and sales corporations already in place,” noted CEO Cho, who also called on all subsidiaries in the Asia region to accelerate their business management by implementing active localization strategiesLast year, the company achieved sales of more than KRW 7.8 trillion in the Asian market, continuously increasing sales by about KRW 1 trillion yearly with double-digit growth over the past two years.This year alone, the CEO has already spent more than 150 hours in the air visiting nine countries across North America, Europe, Asia and Central and South America – participating in major events, including CES 2023 and AHR Expo in the U.S.A. and ISE 2023 in Spain, and touring various LG facilities in Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Australia
Category Archives: Financial
Electrolux Group seeks alternative buyer to Memphis factory
The divestment of the Electrolux Group manufacturing facility in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, will not be completed as expected since the intended buyer has failed to proceed to closing. Electrolux Group will now seek an alternative buyer.
As earlier communicated, completion of the divestment of the facility was contingent on various factors. The intended buyer has defaulted on its obligations and the agreement is therefore terminated.
In the now terminated contract, communicated on October 12 and December 19, 2022, Electrolux Group had agreed to divest the Memphis facility for a cash consideration of USD 82.5m (approx. SEK 930m). Production in Memphis stopped on June 30, 2022, and the operations have been transferred to the new facility in Springfield, Tennessee.
LG Electronics estimates to log second-highest Q1 profit of W1.5tr
LG Electronics said Friday it predicted its first-quarter operating earnings at 1.5 trillion won ($1.14 billion), which will likely be the company’s second-highest profit for the January-March period, outpacing Samsung Electronics’ financial result for the first time in more than a decade.Details on each business sector’s estimated figures were not available in Friday’s earnings guidance, but market watchers expect that LG’s key business divisions for home appliances, TVs and vehicle components put up solid results in the January-March period.
Amazon takeover of iRobot faces UK watchdog review
Amazon’s planned takeover of Roomba vacuum cleaner maker iRobot is being reviewed by the UK’s competition watchdog.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking at whether the deal could lead to “a substantial lessening of competition”.
Amazon is seeking to grow its operations for smart home appliances.
Both Amazon and iRobot have both said they are “working co-operatively” with regulators.
Amazon announced it was buying iRobot last year in a $1.7bn (£1.4bn) takeover deal.
Roomba models sell in the UK from £249, with some costing up to £899.Both Amazon and Massachusetts-based iRobot said they were “working co-operatively” with the relevant regulators over the merger.
LG Electronics Ranks 1st in World Home Appliance Market Single Brands in 2022
Haier took first place in terms of sales in the global home appliance market in 2022. This is the result of making a series of M&A deals with GE based in the United States, Fisher & Paykel based in New Zealand and Candy, based in Italy. By brands rather than sales revenue, LG Electronics maintained its No. 1 position.
According to Haier’s business report on April 4, sales of Haier’s home appliance division, excluding electronic parts and TVs, were tallied at 227.94677 billion yuan (about 43.7658 trillion won or US$33.3193 billion) in 2022. During the same period, sales of LG Electronics’ H&A Division in charge of the home appliance business amounted to 29.8955 trillion won (US$22.7613 billion), falling behind Haier by 14 trillion won (US$11 billion). Whirlpool recorded 25.4834 trillion won (US$19.4021 billion). A year ago, in 2021, Haier also took the world’s No. 1 spot in household appliances. At the time, its sales were about 39.2187 trillion won (US$29.8680 billion), a difference of more than 12 trillion won from LG Electronics’ 27.1097 trillion won (US$20.6461 billion).
Among Korean companies, LG Electronics surpassed Whirlpool in the United States in terms of sales, becoming the global No. 1 home electronics company for the first time in 2020. It maintained its No. 1 position for two consecutive years until last year. However, this is the result of overlookingoverlooking Haier, which is relatively unknown in Korea. “It is difficult to directly compare Haier’s group sales, which are the consolidated sales of several brands such as GE, which Haier took over, and LG Electronics’ sales are sales posted by one single brand,” LG Electronics said with reference to this.
Haier rose to prominence on the world stage when it bought foreign home appliance companies. After buying Japan’s Sanyo, it even took over the home appliance division from GE in the United States in early 2016. As of the end of 2014, before GE was in talks with Haier over selling off its home appliance business unit from GE, the unit’s sales sat at 9 trillion won or about US$8.44 billion. Haier has grown tremendously since the acquisition of the unit from GE. Haier’s home appliance sales jumped 1.5 times from about 12 trillion won (US$9.1 billion) in 2015 just before the acquisition of the unit to 18 trillion won (US$14 billion) in 2016.
Haier’s purchases of overseas home appliance companies were made in order to break away from its low-priced brand image as a Chinese company as well as to increase its size, analysts say. Recently, Haier is focusing on the smart home business while emphasizing its Internet of Things-based premium home appliance strategy.
Miele subsidiary Agrilution ends business with automated greenhouses
Daily freshly harvested salads and herbs from an automatically controlled greenhouse (‘Plantcube’) – with this concept, the Munich-based start-up Agrilution wanted to bring the idea of vertical farming into the home. Since the end of 2019, this has been happening under the umbrella of the Miele Group. Now, the Gütersloh-based household appliance company has announced that it will no longer be continuing the business with the Plantcubes due to a lack of economic prospects. This affects almost 40 salaried as well as additional student employees, who have been given notice of termination due to the closure of the business on June 30, 2023. The approximately 650 users, who also purchased their seeds (‘Seedbars’) through Agrilution, will soon receive an offer to buy back their equipment.
Experts understand ‘vertical farming’ as the space-saving supply of fresh food via large, multi-storey greenhouses. Agrilution itself was founded in 2013, but then had to file for insolvency proceedings in 2019 after a financing round could not be realised as planned. After the opening of insolvency proceedings, Miele took over the brand, the know-how and almost all employees in a so-called asset deal and transferred them to the newly founded 100% subsidiary Agrilution Systems GmbH.
Over the past few years, with intensive financial and technical support from Miele, work has been done to guide the business model, product portfolio and workforce into a sustainable marketable future. ‘Unfortunately, however, it has since become apparent that demand has fallen far short of expectations,’ says Gernot Trettenbrein, Senior Vice President New Growth Factory, amongst others responsible for new business areas at Miele. In addition, this product was marketed at over 3,000 euros due to its technical complexity.
In order to make the Plantcube attractive to broader target groups, an additional series was to be launched at a significantly lower entry price. However, this could no longer be realised due to the skyrocketing costs of materials, energy and logistics. As a result, after careful consideration of all available options, the decision was made not to pursue the plantcube business any further. In conjunction with this, Agrilution’s business operations will cease on June 30, 2023. Miele would like to thank the Agrilution team for their dedicated service and wishes all employees the success they deserve in their future careers.
The dealers who marketed Agrilution’s Plantcube as resellers have already been informed separately by Agrilution, as have all end customers and other users. Furthermore, the company has announced that it will buy back all Plantcubes that are in use or still in stock. Detailed offers will follow within the next few weeks
Elica presents the 2022 Sustainability Report
Elica spa has published the 2022 edition of the Sustainability Report under the slogan “Aspira, Inspira” which represents the ability to continuously imagine innovative and sustainable solutions for the future because every great idea, just like every great company, is born from an inspiration . Improving air quality has always been the starting point. Inspiring people and your target market is the next step.
Despite the difficult context, Elica achieved particularly challenging goals in 2022, breaking its own records for the second consecutive year. The consolidation of its global leadership was made possible by excellent management and financial performance and by a strategic “Sustainability Roadmap” based on three pillars: production and products with low environmental impact, people and governance.
During 2022, the Group used 100% renewable energy in almost all of its production sites in Italy and Poland. This policy has been accompanied by some energy efficiency projects which have contributed to further limiting our carbon footprint.
Electrolux invests 110 million in Susegana
If the unions accept measures aimed at increasing productivity, the Treviso plant could become the European hub in the production of mid-range built-in refrigerators with an annual production of 1.1 million pieces Electrolux is considering investing 110 million euros in the period 2024-2026 to produce built-in refrigerators by expanding the Susegana plant. As reported by Il Sole 24 Ore on 29 November, the announcement of the Susegana option came after Electrolux last year, bet 102 million euros on the dishwasher factory in Solaro (Milan)
Electrolux had announced,,the closure of the Hungarian factory in Nyíregyháza, the largest in Europe dedicated to the production of refrigerators.
In return, however, the Swedish company has asked the unions to improve productivity. In a meeting with the union representatives (Fiom, Fim and Uilm), the company explained the project to make Susegana a reference point for the production of built-in refrigerators.
In the high-end range, products with retail prices above a thousand euros, the new products of the Genesi platform are producing results in line with the multinational’s expectations. Now Electrolux wants to reduce costs in productions aimed at the mid-market segment.110 million euros of investments will go to a new Genesi line, which would be the third, and then to redo and modernize the technological departments, optimizing logistics and supply flows.
Electrolux has explained to the unions that it will be necessary to reach by 2027 the production of 1.1 million pieces per year through a significant number of permanent hirings.
BSH end of year brief
Today’s Annual Press Briefing closes the fiscal year 2022. BSH look back on a successful year in a volatile and turbulent global environment.BSH did it again!
Bradshaw Luxury Appliances has been placed into administration
The company, which distributed premium indoor and outdoor kitchen appliance brands such as Steel Cucine, Gaggenau, Kuppersbusch, Lynx, Fisher and Paykel, Kalamazoo, Deli Vita and Sub-Zero and Wolf, entered administration on March 8.
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