Crisic Lotte Group seeks AI innovation in global market

Lotte Group's booth during the Seoul Mobility Show 2025 / Courtesy of Lotte Group

Lotte Group vowed Thursday to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) technology ethically in its mission to strengthen its presence in the global market.

According to the country’s largest retailer, it recently had an in-house event to enact an ethics charter on its employees’ use of AI. During the event, it announced its six major ethical pillars when using AI technology: mutual respect, safety, transparency, fairness, responsibility and solidarity.

“These pillars are based on the UNESCO and Ministry of Science and ICT’s AI ethics guidelines,” a group official said in a press release. “The group’s efforts in AI will contribute to the good of all mankind.”

It added that the group and its affiliated companies have strongly encouraged its workers to use AI technology to improve the group’s competitiveness in the global market.

“Lotte Chemical has developed an AI-powered simulation system helping match a customer’s preferred synthetic resin color. It helped improve the company’s productivity by 50 percent,” the official said.

“(The group’s other petrochemical affiliate) Lotte Fine Chemical has also established a simulator analyzing margin by calculating prices of raw materials and contracts with customers.”

Sustainable growth

In a bid to fulfill its commitment to ethics, Lotte Group started a sustainable growth project in Ghana, where the Korean retailer has helped improve local cacao farms’ crop environment since October. As part of the project, it also recently donated about 130,000 cacao saplings to the Ghanaian government.

The African country is the world’s second-largest cacao producer but has long suffered sluggish crops for years due to heat waves and harmful insects.

Lotte Wellfood, the group’s confectionary affiliate, built a production factory in Pune in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the company’s first factory that has been built since it acquired local ice cream producer Havmor in 2017.

Now, with the Pune factory, the company has nine factories in India.

In April, the group’s affiliate companies, including Lotte Chemical, Lotte Energy Materials, Lotte Infracell, Lotte Innovate and Lotte Global Logistics, joined the Seoul Mobility 2025 to introduce the group’s latest developments in eco-friendly energy and autonomous drive.