GS to expand business in Singapore

GS Group Chairman Huh Chang-soo, right, and GS Caltex Chairman Hur Dong-soo, second from right, inspect a subway construction site managed by GS Engineering and Construction in Singapore, Monday. / Courtesy of GS Group

GS Group, Korea’s eighth largest conglomerate by assets, is seeking to expand its energy, retail and construction businesses in Singapore in line with the company’s growth strategy focusing on Southeast Asian nations.

GS Group Chairman Huh Chang-soo convened a meeting of heads of affiliates in Singapore from Sunday to Monday, discussing ways for the firm to take deeper roots in the city-state and go beyond that in the long run.

“Southeast Asian countries have huge growth potential considering that they are rich in natural and human resources as well as being geographically close to Korea,” Huh said in a statement released on Monday. He urged heads of affiliates to become more aggressive in developing the Singapore market with skills and experiences they have earned while developing the Chinese market.

“We should be proactive in times of difficulty. It’s time for us to actively seek new business opportunities with established systems for risk management and other potential threats,” he said.

This was the second meeting of this kind held overseas after the first one in China’s Qingdao last year, heralding the group’s full-fledged entry into the East Asian market, GS officials said. They added Singapore is viewed as one of the trend-setters of the world’s oil, retail and construction industries and that success in the small country is normally a harbinger of its success in other Asian countries.

Following the meeting, Huh visited regional office of the group’s oil refinery arm GS Caltex (GSC), retail arm GS Global and GS Engineering and Construction (GS E&C).

Established in 1995, GS Caltex Singapore has grown up as Singapore’s 10th largest company by sales in 2011 on the back of brisk trade of crude and petrochemical products with its Seoul-based headquarters. It supplies nearly 50 percent of crudes refined by GSC.

GS Global Singapore launched in July 2010 is a trade agent specializing in petrochemical products, grain products and bio-fuel. It’s trying to add finance, logistics and investment to its business lineup.

GS E&C is in charge of a 600 billion won ($549 million) project to build a general hospital in central Singapore. The hospital will be completed by 2015 with the capacity of accommodating nearly 1,000 patients. The firm is also involved in a project to build a subway tunnel and two stations. <The Korea Times/Park Si-soo>