Chungcheongnam-do

It is setting up a trade center in Los Angelesas an advance base to export its agricultural, fishery and industrial products.
Chungnam Province is planning to move its export advance base in New York City to Los Angeles.
Governor Lee visited Los Angeles from September 4 to 11 to promote the region’s exports to the United States. After the trip, he announced that the province decided to abolish its trade center in New York City, which set out to promote the export of its agricultural, fishery, and industrial products made by small- and medium-sized companies and set up the Chungnam Commerce Office at the LA Trade Center of KOTRA (Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency). The provincial office will form an export team dedicated to agricultural and fishery products and hire experts from the private sector.

Chungnam Province established the coopera- tive foundation to export its products to U.S.A. and closed many deals on their exports.
Chungnam Provincesigned a three-party MOU to promote the exports of Chungnam’s products with Mr. Gary Toebben, the president of LA Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Mr. Lee Chang-yeop, the president of LA Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Koreans. Mr. Toebben will visit Korea and work on the detailed areas of cooperation in October.
Chungnam Province also signed an MOU to promote cooperation on exports with Lee Brothers (Mr. Lee Seung-man), Freshia Market (Mr. Park Seok-hwan), and

Wang Globalnet (Mr. Kang Seung-heon), all of which have a distribution and marketing network for Korean products and agreed on an active purchase of Chungnam Province’s clean agricultural and fishery products.

Chungnam rice will be exported to U.S.A. by a 3,000-ton export deal
Chungnam Province set a new record towards a complete change in Korea’s rice export market. It has another reason to be happy because it has closed deals and consultations worth about 80 million dollars in exports of its agricultural and fishery products. Taking a tour across the United States for business purposes, Governor Lee signed an MOU with Mr. Kang Seung-heon, the president of Wang Globalnet in Los Angeles on

September 6. It will export 3,000 tons of its rice for two years from the end of this year.
This is a record high in Korean rice exports. Chungnam Provincewill export two rice products, Seosan Tteumbugi and Dangjin Haenaru, to the United States after this fall’s harvest.
The team's design to explore new markets overseas for Chungnam’s agricultural and fishery products in LA also closed a huge deal on Cheonan pears and Ganwoldo salted oyster with hot pepper. The team recorded a total of 79.127 million dollars of export deals and consulta- tions including the 3,000 tons of rice (6 million dollars) at the export talks held at the Plaza Hotel in LA.


Governor Lee signed a large-scale investment MOU worth 179 million dollars with Rohm & Haas in Phila- delphia.
Governor Lee signed a large-scale investment MOU with Rohm & Haas at its headquarters at Spring House Tour in Philadelphia on September 28 and attracted a new investment of about 20 million dollars. The contents signed and agreed on the MOU include Rohm & Haas’ investment of 175 million dollars to set up a new LCD film company and expansion of its investment to 230 million dollars in later stages, its investment of 4 million dollars to expand the LCD part plant in the foreign nationals’ complex in Cheonan, and its investment of 20

million dollars or so to build a new coating agent factory by the end of this year. Rohm & Haas’ large investments will help Chungnam settle down as an advance base to become the world’s LCD business cluster.
With the large investment MOU with Rohm & Haas, Chungnam has attracted a total of 1.266 billion dollars, more than the target 1.2 billion dollars for 2007.


Chungnam Province signed its first investment agreement with an Italian automobile part company.
One of the world-renowned automobile parts companies, UFI Filters (CEO Renato Cavalli) agreed to make investments into the Foreign Investment Zone in Inju, Asan, Chungnam Province. On October 9, Chungnam Province signed a 10 million dollar investment MOU with the company at its headquarters in Verona, Italy.
With entirely foreign investments, UFI Filters will build its factories in Block 37 of the Foreign Investment Zone in Inju, Asan in an area of over 6,370㎡ and produce automobile filters in the first half of 2008. There will be 1,000 direct and indirect new jobs created. Following the investment of WFC last year, UFI Filters’investments in the region demonstrate to the world that Chungnam Provinceis emerging as a new center of the automobile parts industry.


Chungnam Province invited CEOs of foreign companies in order to attract foreign investments and promote its exports.
Governor Lee engaged in active sales activities at KOTRA on September 20 by inviting 100 or so people including Mr. Alexander Vershbow, the American ambassador in Korea, foreign businessmen in Korea, CEOs of foreign companies, and potential investors.
In his speech, he explains, “Chungnam Province is located in the heart of Korea, adjacent to the Seoul metropolitan area and well equipped with complete transportation and logistics infrastructure including highways, railways and ports. All those conditions contribute to its active growth and investments in economic terms and point to its infinite growth potential.” Actual statistics also support his enthusiastic speech; Chungnam Province has attracted an average of 310 businesses for the last five years, which have in turn driven the region’s economic growth and contributed to its annual growth of 16.2% of trades.

 

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Conclusion of the contract with Air Liquide for the $50 Million Investment

On Novemember 13th, 2007, Chungnam and Air Liquide of France concluded the investment contract on establishing the gas supply facilities for industry at the Headquarters of Air Liquide in Paris.

According to that contract, Air Liquide invests $50million that is needed for the establishing gas supply facilities in Dangjin area. This investment will not only produce the sales effect equivalent to 30 billion won, but also become a catalyzer to accelerate the activation of steel business cluster consisted of the Hyundai Steel, the Dongbu Steel and other companies.
Experts regard the successful conclusion of this contract as a demonstration of the fact that now Chungnam is leading the national economic development.
Due to omnidirectional investment-inducing activities closely connected with strategically important industries such as Steel, IT, Automobile accessories and Petrochemical industry, Chungnam could make a big deal with Air Liquide.
Air Liquide Group, the number one company specialized in the industrial gas- supply area, was established in 1902 and has supplied gases needed for the manufacturing Semi-conductor, Chemical materials, Steel and Medical equipment. Currently, Air Liquide is a multi-national company with $14.4 billion gross annual sales and occupies 28% of the world gas market and ranks 19th in the chemical business area.