ELECTRONICS conglomerate LG Group yesterday unveiled plans to invest a record 20 trillion won (about £11.7 billion) into its business this year in an effort to take on rivals including fellow South Korean giant Samsung.
LG – which has about 40 subsidiaries, ranging from chemicals to flat-screen televisions and mobile phones – will spend £8.2bn on its factories, while £3.5bn will go into research and development (R&D). This is 19 per cent higher than its investment in 2012.
The company will spend £7.8bn of the factory investment on its electronics business, mainly to build ultra-high resolution liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) display plants, and more advanced smartphone and TV production lines. The rest of the investment will go to its chemicals and telecoms service sectors.
A large part of the R&D spending will be used on advanced technologies, including smartphone software and TV products.
The group, which employed 125,000 in South Korea at the end of 2012, also plans to recruit more than 15,000 employees this year.
Investing in its factories and R&D operations could provide a boost to components suppliers, including Edinburgh-based micro-chip maker Wolfson Microelectronics, which makes devices used inside LG’s smartphones. Rival Samsung is also one of Wolfson’s biggest customers.
