Seoul: Lotte Chemical Corp., the chemical arm of South Korea's Lotte Group, announced its focus on restoring financial health this year by accelerating restructuring efforts. Speaking at a shareholders' meeting, Chief Executive Officer Lee Young-jun highlighted strategies to boost the company's core competitiveness amid geopolitical uncertainties in the Middle East and volatile raw material supplies.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the company plans to reduce its less competitive conventional petrochemical operations and improve its financial position through tighter control of capital spending. The newly operational petrochemical plant, which began operations late last year, is expected to incur high initial costs, as noted by Lee.

Lotte Chemical aims to integrate production at its new plant in Indonesia with its global hub in Malaysia to maximize synergies. The company targets increasing the share of high-value specialty materials in products like smartphones and home appliances to over 60 percent by 2030. Currently, 60-70 percent of its revenue is derived from petrochemical products.

Lee stated, "We aim to transform into a specialty petrochemical company with sustainable profitability and growth potential, reducing our reliance on the traditional naphtha cracking center (NCC)-based business." He also mentioned plans to revamp the company's research and development roadmap to secure core materials technologies in advance.

The restructuring of Lotte Chemical's loss-making petrochemical division began in early 2025, focusing on improving facility utilization and strengthening its balance sheet through the divestment of non-core assets. The company operates three overseas petrochemical plants-in the United States, Indonesia, and Malaysia-alongside three domestic facilities.

In 2025, Lotte Chemical's net loss widened to 2.49 trillion won (US$1.7 billion) from 1.82 trillion won the previous year, amidst a prolonged downturn in the petrochemical industry.