Today’s program started at 08.45. It consisted the visit of two industrial companies near Busan. After a two-hour-drive by bus, we arrived at Eastman Fibers Korea Limited in Ulsan. Mr. Sung-Hweh Kim welcomed us warmly and gave us a brief introduction about the structure of the company. The headquarter of Eastman is located in Tennessee, US. Furthermore, Eastman serves 19 industries/markets and has 49 factory sites. The production-site we visited produces acetate tow (basic product for cigarette filter). After the introduction we were guided through the production site. The key lesson learned from the visit was to see how a plant is organized which is focused on mass production. The output of this plant is 30 000 tons of acetate tow per year. The main customer of Eastman
is the domestic and American cigarette industry.
After having Korean lunch for several times, the whole group was extremely thankful to have been treated with the choice of a delightful buffet at the Topaz restaurant in the Hyundai Hotel. The selection of different kinds of foods was absolutely outstanding: from sushi to oysters and even caviar, everything was at hand and also the vegetarians in the group were pleased. The meal culminated in an amazing dessert consisting out of fresh fruit and diverse delicious sweets.
The second company we visited today was Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., LTD. Hyundai is well known as Car manufacturer in Europe. With this visit, we saw that Hyundai is active in many different industries (Offshore + Engineering, Electro Electric Systems, Green Energy, Shipbuilding, Engine + Machinery, Industrial Plant + Engineering, Construction Equipment, Research + Development). The production site we visited is focused on shipbuilding. The shipyard stretches over four kilometers along the coast of Mipo Bay in Ulsan. The shipbuilding division was founded in 1972. Today, Hyundai is the biggest shipbuilder worldwide with a market share of 15%. After a short video about Hyundai, the group was guided through a part of the production site. The area is incredible huge, that we had to take the bus. On the way to the engine assemble-hall we passed several dry-docks. It was very impressing to become an impression about the size of today’s cargo-ships. Mr. Adrian Siegfried guided us through the part of the site, where the engines are assembled. None of us had thought before our visit, that a ship engine can reach the size of a house.
On the way back to the hotel, we closed the today’s program with a nice karaoke-session in the bus.