Pohang's Tteokdol 'Bentonite Festival' Attracts Over 20,000 Attendees in Great Success... Launching High-Value Bioindustry Development

Promoting Bentonite Minerals ... Operating Large Exhibition Hall, Conducting Live Commerce

Pohang's Tteokdol 'Bentonite Festival' Promotes the Excellence of Local Minerals Nationwide.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongguk Lee] Pohang City, Gyeongbuk Province, has launched a full-scale campaign to promote bentonite, known as the "Tteokdol of Pohang," with a differentiated strategy to lead the next-generation K-bio industry.

The opening ceremony of the "2022 Bentonite Festival" was held on the 29th at Pohang Yeongildae Beach, attended by Mayor Kangdeok Lee, City Council Chairman Ingyu Baek, National Assemblyman Byungwook Kim, Vice Chairman of Gyeongbuk Provincial Council Yongseon Park, and President of Daegu Newspaper Sangseop Kim, revitalizing the spirits of citizens and tourists weary from this summer's heatwave and COVID-19.

This festival featured experience booths where citizens and tourists could learn about the excellence of bentonite, the region's representative mineral, and corporate exhibition halls that promoted products and expanded sales channels. Additionally, live commerce enabled real-time product sales, attracting significant attention.

The large bentonite exhibition hall allowed visitors to see at a glance the origin, formation principles and characteristics, distribution, uses, and the process from mineral to product.

Permanent programs included diverse experience zones such as face painting, calligraphy, leather crafts, and balloon art, while magic shows and busking performances provided abundant entertainment and events for citizens and tourists visiting the festival.

Bentonite, called the "Tteokdol of Pohang," is a representative mineral of the Pohang region with excellent beauty effects such as waste removal, whitening, moisturizing, and elasticity enhancement, as well as immune system boosting effects, making it usable as medical clay.

Bentonite mined in Pohang is known to have a higher purity, lower heavy metal content than overseas products, and superior efficacy.

Mayor Kangdeok Lee said, "I hope that the precious resources deposited in the Pohang area will be widely known through the 2022 Bentonite Festival," and added, "We will spare no support to establish Pohang's Tteokdol as a future new growth industry."

Pohang City is actively promoting the 4+1 strategy (Bio-Health, Battery, Hydrogen Fuel Cell, Steel Advancement + East Sea Marine Tourism) for sustainable urban development through industrial diversification.

In September last year, to create an innovative bio new industry ecosystem, the city established a "Medical Functional Clay Industrialization Platform" based on local minerals within the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources.

This platform is a core infrastructure of the "Functional Clay Mineral Development Project," which invested a total of 16 billion KRW from 2016 to 2021.

Facilities covering a total floor area of 1,473㎡ were built to handle all processes from raw ore classification to crushing, grinding, refining, sterilization, drying, and packaging, supporting quality evaluation of high value-added clay-based pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, customized technology R&D support for companies, and production of high-quality prototypes.

Furthermore, Pohang City plans to proactively expand the business by creating next-generation future food sources linked to the existing mineral industry to foster the pelotherapy industry (pelotherapy: a health and beauty method using clay minerals for natural healing).