SK Innovation, the owner of South Korea’s biggest oil refiner, has reorganized its offices to push forward the company’s new portfolio of battery and chemical businesses, it said Tuesday.

The company has put the battery unit and its R&D lab under the direct supervision of its CEO Kim Jun, as well as material and component development for rechargeable batteries.

The newly launched battery unit will lead the company’s overall marketing strategies and expand its R&D capacities on battery development.

Meanwhile, the company’s chemical arm will focus more on automotive and packaging businesses by separating them from the existing marketing department. The decision was made to expand the company’s drive to manufacture more high value-added chemical products.

“The reorganization was conducted to do better something we haven’t done before,” said the CEO. “It is to speed up (the company’s new vision) Deep Change 2.0, (in which we plan to) focus on batteries and chemicals.”

The structural reorganization came two months after the company announced that it would reshape its business portfolio and nurture new revenue sources in the chemical and battery sectors.

The company plans to spend 10 trillion won ($8.91 billion) in the battery and other nonrefining sectors by 2020. The investment will help the company solidify its market position as a leader in energy and chemical segments in the world.

Since 2011, the company spent 4 trillion won on the chemicals and lubricants sectors by upgrading its petrochemical plants in Incheon and Ulsan, and forging a joint venture with Spanish oil company Repsol to build an oil base lubricant plant said to be the largest in Europe.

Through the investment, SK Innovation became the world’s sixth-largest paraxylene producer and the first in the oil lubricant sector, the company said, adding that it also helped diversify its business portfolio from an oil refining company to an energy and chemical firm.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)