Selected 92 Companies Since 2015
Government Project Contracts and Overseas Market Development
The ‘Promising Small and Medium Enterprise Development Project,’ which Pohang City and Pohang Technopark are focusing on, is leading the creation of quality jobs and revitalization of the local economy based on steady achievements.
The '2022 Pohang City Promising Small and Medium Enterprise Designation Certificate Award Ceremony' held in July last year.
This project, launched in 2015 as part of the core pledge of the 6th local government administration to create an ‘ecosystem for fostering small but strong enterprises,’ selects about 10 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) each year with technological competitiveness and growth potential. It aims to build industry- and function-specific leading enterprise groups and support their growth into ‘global strong small and medium enterprises’ active both domestically and internationally.
To date, a total of 92 companies have been selected. These companies receive tailored support including ▲management diagnosis and growth strategy consulting ▲strengthening R&D capabilities through the PM (Project Manager) system and cooperation with related organizations ▲global package support to expand export channels in overseas markets ▲preferential working capital loans for SMEs, among various support programs and benefits provided at different growth stages across all fields.
Based on this support, Pohang’s promising small and medium enterprises have maintained steady growth, with average annual sales and employment increasing by 6.7% and 5.5%, respectively, from 2015 to 2022. Through the project’s unique program, the 1 company 1 PM system (assigning master’s and doctoral-level researchers affiliated with universities and research institutes), these SMEs have secured a total of 424 government projects worth 140.3 billion KRW over the past eight years, thereby strengthening their external competitiveness in the core R&D sector.
In particular, MS Pipe (CEO Park Jung-ho), selected as a promising small and medium enterprise in 2016, benefited from the global market entry package support project, which included overseas market trend analysis, export marketing strategies, and consultation meetings with local buyers. As a result, they successfully signed contracts worth 7.3 million USD that year and achieved the remarkable feat of receiving the 10 million USD Export Tower Award upon being selected as a global strong small and medium enterprise in 2018.
In the area of external awards, which indicate corporate competitiveness, visible achievements have been made by companies such as ▲OneSoftDigm (CEO Lee Dae-ho, winner of the CES 2023 Innovation Award in the U.S.) ▲StradVision (CEO Kim Jun-hwan, selected as an excellent company in the Ministry of Science and ICT’s D·N·A (Data·Network·Artificial Intelligence) category) ▲ANPOLY (CEO Noh Sang-chul, the first Korean company to win the Future Food Asia (FFA) Grand Prize).
Lee Jeom-sik, President of Pohang Technopark, said, “We will take the lead not only in continuously discovering and nurturing promising local companies with technological competitiveness but also in seeking and implementing practical support measures at the corporate level.”
Mayor Lee Kang-deok stated, “The growth engine of SMEs lies in securing differentiated competitiveness through technology development,” adding, “We will focus administrative efforts to ensure that promising small and medium enterprises with growth potential can strengthen their capabilities and achieve steady results based on various strategic support projects and excellent R&D linkage and cooperation.”
This year, the Pohang City Promising Small and Medium Enterprise Development Project plans to announce recruitment at the end of March and select and support about 10 new promising small and medium enterprises through a strict four-stage process including eligibility screening, on-site evaluation, presentation evaluation, and comprehensive evaluation.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
