Invest KOREA

When asked about the major accomplishments of his company, Tadashi Kobayashi, president and CEO of Sumitomo Corporation Korea, heads to a bookshelf in his office lined with memorabilia. He brings back a small square plaque bearing the Korean word for “connection.”

Commemorating the connection between Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries, Sumitomo Corporation and Sumitomo Metal Industry (now merged with Nippon Steel), the plaque was given to Kobayashi last August. For about 40 years, Sumitomo Corporation and Sumitomo Metal Industry, both part of Japan’s Sumitomo Group, have supplied steel products to Hyundai Heavy Industries, with their supply volume reaching 5 million tons in 2010.

“We have been continuing good business relations [among] the three companies,” said Kobayashi, who has been at the helm of Sumitomo Corporation Korea for a year and nine months.

Strong business relations and cooperation are what Kobayashi and his staff of 84 prize most as the Korea subsidiary of the Japan-based Sumitomo Corporation. A global trading company that has had a presence in Korea since 1963, Sumitomo Corporation Korea imports resources and materials in the steel, chemicals, resource energy and machinery sectors from Japan into Korea, for Korean companies, and exports products made by the¬se companies to countries including China, Japan and Vietnam. The company is a major part of Sumitomo’s overseas strategy.

“In terms of foreign trade, Korea is the third biggest counterpart for Japan, and Japan is the second biggest one for Korea. Both have close relations on trade over the years. In terms of FDI amount in Korea, Japan is the biggest among other countries’ investment,” said Kobayashi. “These facts tell us Korea is one of the most important countries as business base for Japanese trading company working in global market.”

In recent years, the company has also been pursuing joint development projects everywhere from the Middle East to Africa, with Korean corporations including KEPCO and KORES. These collaborations have strengthened partnerships in the resource development field and supported the globalization of Korean companies. Sumitomo Corporation Korea’s main customers include Korea’s conglomerates — POSCO, Samsung, Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Heavy Industries, to name a few.

“We cultivated good relations with those companies,” Kobayashi said. “We call that global partnerships with those companies, and we hope to have tighter relations with those established companies.” With three main business divisions — the Metals Business Division, the Mineral Resources, Energy and Chemicals Division and the Machinery, Telecommunications & Infrastructure Business Division — Sumitomo Corporation Korea has its Seoul headquarters in Jongno-gu and a branch in Busan that opened in 2009 and will help the company expand its business in steel plates for shipbuilding, wind power and nuclear power generation-related equipment in Korea’s southern region. What began as a liaison office in 1963 became the fully invested Sumitomo Corporation Korea in 1994.

The company reached record high profits in 2010 and 2011 and increased its staff from 55 to 84 in the past four years. Total assets increased by more than 100 percent over the same four years.

Heading now into a new year, Kobayashi muses on how the company’s goals and targets are shifting. Times are changing, Korean industries have gone global and Korean product quality has improved, the CEO said. While his staff has thus far focused on forging good relations between Japanese and Korean companies, they must now gradually step into the role of global business men and women to bring about global partnerships.

“We have to shift from the Japan-centric business to the global business,” said Kobayashi.