"Kolmar BNH to Be Developed into a Core Group Company"
Injunction Hearing Scheduled for 4:20 p.m. on July 2
Kolmar Holdings, the holding company of Kolmar Group, announced on July 2 that it will transform its subsidiary Kolmar BNH into a life sciences-focused company.
Kolmar BNH is a subsidiary of Kolmar Holdings, responsible for the health functional food ODM (Original Development Manufacturing) business within Kolmar Group. Kolmar Holdings stated that Kolmar BNH has lost its competitiveness due to several years of poor performance and a lack of future strategy, and expressed its intention to correct the accumulated management failures and shift the company’s structure toward high value-added, life sciences-centered businesses.
Kolmar BNH has shown a clear downward trend in key management indicators such as performance, market capitalization, and stock price over the past five years. Operating profit, which stood at 95.6 billion KRW on a standalone basis in 2020, plummeted by 75% to 23.9 billion KRW last year. Market capitalization, which reached 2.1242 trillion KRW as of August 2020, shrank to 425.9 billion KRW as of June 30, 2025, in just over five years. Kolmar Holdings claims that while major competitors in the health functional food market are achieving double-digit growth, Kolmar BNH alone is experiencing negative growth.
Kolmar Holdings attributes Kolmar BNH’s deteriorating performance to management failure. The company points to CEO Yewon Yoon’s unilateral decision-making and lack of future vision as the causes. Kolmar Holdings explained that CEO Yewon Yoon’s pursuit of proprietary brand businesses, which are fundamentally different from the essence of the ODM business, was the primary reason for the poor performance. The proprietary brand Kolmar Saenghwal Geongang (formerly Celtive Korea), established in June 2020, recorded a loss of 5.2 billion KRW in 2021, ▲ a loss of 1.5 billion KRW in 2022, ▲ a loss of 2.9 billion KRW in 2023, and ▲ a loss of 2.7 billion KRW in 2024, failing to turn a profit even once. The accumulated deficit has now surpassed 10 billion KRW, resulting in a state of complete capital impairment.
Additionally, Kolmar Holdings pointed out that CEO Yewon Yoon provided improper personnel support to a private company. CEO Yewon Yoon was found by the Fair Trade Commission to have provided improper personnel support to KB Lab, a company wholly owned by Yewon Yoon, through HNG, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kolmar BNH. The Fair Trade Commission imposed a fine of approximately 500 million KRW on HNG and KB Lab. In connection with this, HNG was also assessed several hundred million KRW in additional taxes by the National Tax Service due to delayed collection of accounts receivable and improper personnel support.
To normalize management, Kolmar Holdings plans to appoint Vice Chairman Sanghyun Yoon and former CJ CheilJedang Vice President Seunghwa Lee as inside directors on the board. However, a Kolmar Holdings representative emphasized, "Through this repositioning, we will pursue a comprehensive overhaul to rebirth as a core company in the life sciences business. We aim to make this not only a turning point for short-term performance recovery, but also for restoring market trust and strengthening the group’s future competitiveness."
Meanwhile, it is understood that Vice Chairman Sanghyun Yoon released this information ahead of a hearing scheduled for 4:20 p.m. on the same day regarding Kolmar BNH’s injunction request against Kolmar Holdings.
On June 10, CEO Yewon Yoon filed for an injunction with the Daejeon District Court, challenging the legality of convening an extraordinary general meeting. This was in response to Vice Chairman Sanghyun Yoon’s application for court approval to hold an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting in order to join the board. Kolmar BNH stated that Vice Chairman Sanghyun Yoon’s application for the extraordinary general meeting was an attempt to unilaterally alter the agreed succession structure, and explained that, in terms of performance, operating profit is expected to increase by about 30% this year.
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