Future Growth Engines
The Korean government has decided to foster the polyketone industry as a flagship project that will lead future growth engines. It has also been decided that multi-sided display systems, which are called next-generation screen systems, and the eco-friendly and highly-efficient fuel cell industry will be cultivated as well.
The government announced on Jan. 8 that the second flagship project proposal was confirmed at the end of last year through the third public-private consultation body for the creative economy.
According to the proposal, the government is planning to make full-scale expansion into the global high-performance engineering plastic market led by some companies based in developed countries like Dupont and Bayer through the revitalization of the polyketone industry. As an eco-friendly plastic material, polyketone is superior to existing plastic engineering materials in impact strength, wear resistance, and chemical resistance. Therefore, it can be utilized to make household appliances, cameras, and aircraft.
To achieve this goal, Seoul will provide support for the construction of cooperative systems between materials and processing companies. Hyosung, which already developed original technologies to commercialize polyketone with the support of the government, plans to complete the construction of polyketone facilities with 50,000 tons of annual production capacity by the end of this year. The company is also going to build large-scale production systems with a 1 trillion won (US$909 million) investment by 2020.
On top of that, the government is planning to help the multi-sided display system enter the global market, which creates a sense of full immersion using a theater's side walls and its main screen to project footage.
Screen X, a multi-sided display system jointly developed by CJ and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, has been widely acknowledged to give a sense of full immersion to viewers without specialized glasses, unlike 3D movies.
The government is also going to review measures that provide support for research and development aimed at localizing core technologies for fuel cells and developing next-generation fuel cells, along with its plan to use fuel cells as the source of emergency power supply.