Monterrey-based Grupo Promax opens first Mexican plant in South Korea

26 July, 2017

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Monterrey-based Grupo Promax has become the first Mexican manufacturer to make a direct investment in South Korea, by opening a steel dust recycling plant in the Gwangyang Special Economic Zone (GFEZ) in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province.

Mexican Ambassador to Korea Bruno Figueroa, Grupo Promax CEO Eduardo Alverde, Suncheon Mayor Cho Choong-hoon and the GFEZ Commissioner Kwon Oh-bong among others, attended a ceremony on June 14 to start operations.

Figueroa said the plant comes more than 50 years after the first contact between Mexico and Korea with the arrival of the Missionaries of Guadalupe.

He said Grupo Promax's investment in the peninsula shows the "exponential strengthening" of the bilateral relationship in the past decade. In the economic sector, a commercial exchange of US$ 17 billion annually has been achieved and more than 1,800 Korean companies have invested in Mexico. In Korea, Mexican restaurants, commercial representation offices, providers of children's entertainment services and duty-free sales have gradually been established, but none of manufacturing activities so far, until now.

"Grupo Promax will serve the steel market of Korea as one of the world's leading producers of this metal by using its state-of-the-art technology to recycle dust from steel smelting for its use in other industrial processes such as cement and fertilizer production," the embassy said. "At the same time, it will contribute to the protection of the environment and to the generation of jobs in Korea and Mexico".

The amount of investment and job figures related to this endeavor remain undisclosed.

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