Hwacheon Group has gone from strength to strength as Korea’s representative machine tools maker since its inception 60 years ago.
Hwacheon Group Chairman Kwon Young-yual said his late father Kwon Seung-kwan launched a tiny ironworks factory in 1952 at the height of the Korean War (1950-53) with his expertise learned from a career at a Japanese-run molding company. Initially, Hwacheon Machine Tool supplied iron railings for bridges that needed repairs following the war, and later expanded into iron gates for irrigation facilities and floodgates for ports.
Taking a look at the 60-year story of Hwacheon, it vividly demonstrates how the local machine tools industry has made tremendous strides and evolved into a promising export industry. An initial maker of motors and charcoal briquette-making devices, Hwacheon has now grown into a global player of a wide range of the highest-quality lathes, semi-NC lathes, milling machines, grinders, and CNC grinders.
In the process, Hwacheon made many twists and turns. Chairman Kwon recalls that his company had to make critical decisions for its survival every time it was faced with a crisis as Korea underwent economic and industrial changes. The greatest hardship Hwacheon underwent was when it was caught up in a severe financial crunch in 1980 as the second oil shock roiled the global economy into a recession, teaching it a valuable lesson about the risks of over-borrowing. Thanks to that lesson, Hwancheon managed to overcome the 1997 Asian financial crisis without undergoing restructuring.
Chairman Kwon realized that his company could not be viable in the local market unless it could survive hardships in the global market. The company established a locally-incorporated subsidiary in Chicago in May 1993 to make inroads into North American markets; Hwacheon Europe was established in Germany in December 1993 to strengthen its presence in Europe; and Hwacheon Asia opened its doors in Singapore in April 2006.
The hegemony of the machine tools industry, which flourished in Europe during the Industrial Revolution, remained in the hands of the United States until 1970s. Since then, Japan has grown into a dominant global player with the development of mechatronics, a combination of mechanics, electronics, and other disciplines, said Chairman Kwon, adding that Korea, with its good manufacturing capabilities, has created synergy effects through its technological tie-ups with German companies, which have excellent design and technological prowess. He boasts of the fact that Korea, which has in the past depended on Japan for machine tool imports, is now in close contention with its eastern neighbor, even though Korean-made machine tools sell at cheaper prices than their Japanese counterparts. He set his company’s sights on producing better quality products than on its Japanese counterpart’s.
Chairman Kwon said Hwacheon is striving to expand its business environs to industrial machines in use for manufacturing processes.
Chairman Kwon expounds his company’s greatest values °™ tenacity, integrity, and sincerity °™ that he believes have constitut-ed the driving force behind Hwacheon’s success story. He said he also has been attaching priority on manpower manage-ment, personality, and integrity to follow in his late father’s footsteps.
Kwon paints a rosy picture of his company from the mid- and long-term perspective. Hwacheon is now striving to build a new tradition with world-class competitive prowess and a vision of offering the world’s best products and services.
Hwacheon developed Korea’s first NC lathe in June 1977; the nation’s first CNC milling machine and copy milling machine in October 1983; and Korea’s first NCTC in December 1988.
Hwacheon Machinery Works, Hwacheon Machine Tools, and Hwacheon Gear Works won the ISO 9001 Certificate in September 1994, September 1995, and September 1998, respectively.
