Kumho Asiana Group is striving to go back to what made it successful some 70 years ago. Reflecting on the humble founding of the business with just two taxis, the modern group is now determined to overcome the internal and external hardships it faces.
The group has set up three “tenets”: profit management, quality management and safety management, devoting itself to building foundations to make the group a company that can be viable and sustainable for another 100 years.
Major subsidiaries of Kumho Asiana, including Asiana Airlines, Kumho Tire and Kumho Industrial, are building up fundamentals based on these management tenets and accelerating efforts to ramp up their industrial competitive edge.
Asiana Airlines is strengthening its business capabilities to survive the fierce competition of the global aviation industry. To this end, the airliner has been focusing on such projects as the inauguration of new routes, expanding flights, introducing more advanced aircraft and the establishment of the low-cost carrier Air Seoul.
The airliner inaugurated the Incheon-Sapporo route with seven flights weekly in July. It has raised the number of the routes to Delhi, India, and Rome from three times to five times weekly. Asiana Airlines launched chartered flights to Budapest, Hungary, between July and August. The airliner is to inaugurate non-regular flights to Christchurch, New Zealand, in December.
Asiana Airlines is aggressively attracting Chinese MICE tourists.
The airliner has introduced four supersize passenger aircraft A380s since 2014 and plans to add two more to its fleet this year. The company plans to add another 25 small-size A321 NEOs on a gradual basis between 2019 and 2025. Asiana Airlines established Air Seoul to cope with changes in the global aviation industry, including charming performances of LCCs. Air Seoul launched the Gimpo-Jeju route and the international route between Incheon and Takamatsu, Japan, recently. The LCC is to inaugurate seven flights to Japan and three others to Southeast Asia this year.
Kumho Tire, which dedicated a new plant in Georgia, the United States, in May, has secured a platform to tap the North American market, one of the world’s biggest.
The plant, capable of producing 4 million tires yearly, is supplying products to global automakers. The United States accounts for a 20 percent share of the company’s annual sales.
The construction of the U.S. plant will enable Kumho Tire to boost its standing and it will contribute to enhancing profitability, a Kumho Tire official said.
Kumho Industrial, which graduated from a workout last year in six years, is building up a foundation to make a second take-off.
The Kumho Asiana Group chairman Park Sam-koo’s ambition to bring his business empire back under his control has been realized with his reacquisition of Kumho Industrial, the de facto holding firm of the group. In 2010, the group’s affiliates, including Kumho Tire and Kumho Industry, were placed under a workout by their creditors, with the group giving up management rights for major affiliates of the group.
Chairman Park regained management control of Kumho Industrial last year and has since been working to recapture the management right of Kumho Tire.
Kumho Industrial Co., the de facto holding company of South Korea’s large conglomerate Kumho Asiana Group, appointed Park Se-chang, the eldest son of the group Chairman Park Sam-koo, as a registered board member, a move that is expected to solidify and speed up the group’s management succession to the third generation of the owner.
Asiana Airlines has introduced four supersize passenger aircraft A380s until now since 2014 and it is to add two more A389s to its fleet this year. The company plans to add 25 small-size A321NEOs to its fleet on a gradual basis between 2019 and 2025. (Photos: Kumho Asiana)
_박삼구.jpg)
