THE KOREA ECONOMIC DAILY, GLOBAL EDITION

Lotte Group has selected Pepero — a thin chocolate-covered stick cookie — as the first brand that it will foster into one of the world’s 10 most valuable brands with annual sales of over 1 trillion won ($747 million).

Pepero is one of Lotte Wellfood Co.'s snacks that recently gained in popularity in overseas markets: its global sales reached 200 billion won in 2023.  

South Korea’s sixth-largest conglomerate aims to nurture the stick-shaped snack into Asia’s No. 1 brand and a global top-10 food and beverage (F&B) brand by 2035 under the direction of its Chairman Shin Dong-bin.

“Lotte’s Korean and Japanese operations must work closely together to build a sustainable brand in the global market,” Shin was quoted as saying to executives accompanying him on a business trip to Europe last week. “I urge you all to work hard to foster multiple global brands with global sales of over 1 trillion won each.”

Shin held the so-called One Lotte strategic meeting in Warsaw, Poland, attended by executives of Lotte affiliates such as Lotte Wellfood CEO Lee Chang-yeop, Lotte Group heir apparent Shin Yoo-yeol, who leads Lotte Corp.'s future growth office, and Lotte Holdings Co.'s CEO Tamatsuka Genichi.

ONE LOTTE FOR GLOBAL BRANDS 

Founded as a bubble gum maker by Lotte’s late Honorary Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho in Japan in 1948, Lotte has grown into a multinational retail-to-chemical business empire calling both Japan and Korea home.

Through close collaboration, Lotte’s Japanese affiliate plans to aid its Korean confectionery sibling Lotte Wellfood — Korea’s No. 1 producer of packaged snacks and ice cream — in its push to discover new growth markets.

Lotte will also seek to expand Pepero sales in the world’s most populous country India and in Southeast Asia, where the snack is already popular.  

To meet its growing demand, Lotte Wellfood announced earlier this year a plan to build a Pepero production line in India, which will serve as one of the company’s Pepero export hubs once it is running in the second half of 2025.

It is part of Lotte Wellfood’s goal to ramp up its overseas sales to 30% to 50% of its total sales by 2027 to boost its global brand awareness.

As part of its global push, Lotte Wellfood acquired Belgian chocolate brand Guylian, also one of the world’s top three chocolate brands, in 2008. Meanwhile, its Japanese sibling took over Wedel, Poland's oldest chocolate brand, from Kraft Foods in 2010.

During his business trip to Europe last week, Chairman Shin visited confectionery factories in Belgium and Poland. He also attended the opening ceremony of Wedel’s chocolate museum in Warsaw.

The Lotte chief has been stressing innovation in a bid to reinvigorate the group’s businesses through two tracks of sales expansion and the discovery of new growth engines.

After years of active mergers and acquisitions to achieve economies of scale, Lotte today focuses more on new growth engines such as bio, the metaverse, hydrogen energy and electric vehicle battery materials while selling off ailing units in its traditional mainstay businesses like chemical.

Write to Hyun-jin Ra at raraland@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.