Invest KOREA

Providing Solutions Everywhere From the Sea to the Stage

Bosch Rexroth Korea has been providing drive and control technologies for 20 years and plans to increase production with a new plant

Roller coaster launchers at amusement parks.

Upper stage machinery for theaters.

Shiplift transfer systems for shipyards, hydrostatic travel drives for forestry machines and pneumatic equipment used to make the yarn that goes into making your T-shirt.

Bosch Rexroth does it all. A global leader in the field of drive and control technologies, the Germany-based company develops, produces and sells customized solutions for driving, controlling and moving tailored to the specifications of every market. Bosch Rexroth Korea Ltd., headquartered in Busan, began operations in Korea 20 years ago as a joint venture with a Korean company. In 2000, operations were transferred into a wholly owned subsidiary of global Bosch Rexroth.

“Korea, being a fast-developing country with an emphasis on heavy industry, machinery, automotive and shipbuilding and later electronics, represented a large and very promising market,” said Heiner Hoffmann, Vice President Finance and Administration of Bosch Rexroth Korea. “It was only logical that Bosch Rexroth had to be present in the Korean marketplace.”

The company has a sales office in Yongin and a factory outlet in Ansan. Last month, it held a ground-breaking ceremony for a new plant in the Busan-Jinhae Free Economic Zone with a net floor space of 17,400m2. The company ranks in the top 10 of Bosch Rexroth’s more than 80 subsidiaries, with sales last year being 120 billion won ($104 million), excluding the business from direct imports by Korean OEMs in Germany.

Bosch Rexroth is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH and the result of a merger between Mannesmann Rexroth AG and the Automation Technology Business Unit of Robert Bosch GmbH. It is a world leader in mobile hydraulics, certain areas of industrial hydraulics and theater stage design.

Bosch Rexroth Korea started as a sales company that imported industrial components from plants in Germany. It added local manufacturing to the business to produce hydraulic power units, hydraulic test benches, hydraulic manifolds and pneumatic panels and cylinders, among other systems. It focuses on the engineering-to-order (ETO) business, providing complex drive and control systems for the marine and offshore business, heavy industry, automotive industry and for factory automation. The company has grown at least 5 percent every year.

“We cannot base our business on the resale of imported components. We have to venture into the value-added business,” Hoffmann said. “We have the 5L policy: local sourcing, local manufacturing, local engineering, local management and local research and development.”

Main customers in Korea, which is Bosch Rexroth’s third-largest market in Asia after China and Japan, include Doosan Infracore, Hyundai Heavy Industries, STX Metal, Hyundai Rotem, Doosan Engine and POSCO. Bosch Rexroth Korea not only provides ready-made components and systems, but also devises the “best in class” solution for each technical problem, according to Hoffmann.

“We understand ourselves as [a] partner of our customers, not just [a] seller of parts,” he said.

This philosophy has contributed to the company’s growing presence in Korea. With the plant to be built in the Busan-Jinhae Free Economic Zone by 2013, Bosch Rexroth Korea will invest $35 million in a state-of-the-art factory for hydraulic systems.

“This investment shows better than anything else that we believe in the future of the Korean marketplace,” Hoffmann said.