Now it’s time to take a close look at a small but competitive business making a difference for the Korean economy. This week’s spotlight is on Seonjin Innotech, an innovator in the packaging industry.

Packaging is an essential part of products, from household goods to food and cosmetics. It is natural for consumers to pick well-packaged products if their quality is the same. Packaging enhances product value, which is why the packaging industry places so much importance on expertise and differentiation. Seonjin Innotech is one such company, which is pioneering new markets with its innovative technology. The company has introduced the country’s first umbrella packing and collecting machine. Its CEO Won Gil-young원길영 explains how the company came to develop its own technology and expanded business.

Seonjin Innotech was established on January 3, 1993 and has been manufacturing vinyl packaging for food and industrial goods for the past 21 years. Three years ago we developed an automatic umbrella packing and collecting machine for the first time in Korea. Packaging is an area that demands expertise and differentiation. Until now packaging had been rather neglected in Korea and overseas. Such neglect resulted in insufficient technological development. So I believed that steady R&D efforts would eventually help us develop innovative products and systems.



Seonjin Innotech CEO Won Young-gil jumped into the packaging industry in 1993. In the early months of its operation the company produced shopping bags and vinyl packaging materials. But in just one year since its founding Seonjin Innotech succeeded in securing Hotel Shilla’s Duty Free Shop as its customer. Quality was the key contributor to Seonjin Innotech’s lucrative deal with the world’s leading duty-free shop.

I heard it later from our contact in the duty-free shop that Seonjin Innotech was third among the candidate companies, but our honesty won over the review panel. As in other industries, an overly competitive business environment undermines product quality. So we explained to our potential customer that they shouldn’t insist on low price if they wanted to maintain a certain level of product quality. I think they took that frank advice into consideration.

Seonjin Innotech CEO Won Young-gil has emphasized technological development since the company’s founding. The company’s competitiveness depended not only on price, but quality. The result was once a customer of Seonjin Innotech, always a customer of Seonjin Innotech. The company’s customer list grew to include the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae, city halls, department stores, airports and schools. Even with a growing list of loyal customers, Seonjin Innotech did not let up on its research and development efforts, and in 2007 introduced specialty packaging for liquid.

We produce both vinyl packaging materials for industrial goods as well as for food and medical supplies. We oversee all production steps, from design and manufacturing to printing and processing. The company has developed the security tamper-evident bag, or STEB, to store liquids, aerosols and gels to pass through airport security. We were the first in Korea to make these security bags and currently all the duty-free shops in Incheon International Airport use them. Also, we are supplying these bags to the Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the International Civil Aviation Organization. I personally have a strong attachment to this product, since everyone said that it is not possible to make such a product with low density polyethylene.

Carry-on liquids, gels, and aerosols over 100 milliliters in volume were banned from all flights in 2007. The International Civil Aviation Organization or ICAO recommended this measure to remove terrorist threats on civilian airplanes. From that year on, liquid products had to be stored in clear plastic bags for security checks. Once Seonjin Innotech developed Korea’s first security tamper-evident bags to keep in pace with the changing times, the company turned its eyes toward making the umbrella vinyl collector machine.



Our umbrella vinyl cover collector is the first of its kind in Korea and we have applied for patents here and abroad. We started exporting the umbrella vinyl cover collector to France and Japan in limited numbers in 2013, but next year we will be selling more umbrella plastic packaging and collecting machines and vinyl packaging for other products to overseas customers. Buyer response was better for the umbrella cover collector. They apparently liked product price and quality. There is no other product like our patented umbrella vinyl cover collector, and I believe that’s what our buyers noticed.

On rainy days in Korea you’ll probably see stainless steel stands where you can insert your wet umbrella into a plastic bag to prevent dripping water from hitting the floor. That contraption only dispenses vinyl covers for umbrellas, but the umbrella bag collector developed by Seonjin Innotech in 2011 can retrieve the umbrella bags without getting hands wet just by putting an umbrella covered in a plastic bag into the collector. It’s simple in design, but nobody had come up with it before. So Seonjin Innotech became the pioneer of umbrella cover collectors and started exporting to France last year. Never the one to rest on its laurels, Seonjin Innotech is still trying to develop new products.

Products require different packaging. We have to keep working to produce new packaging with different functions and designs. Before long, petroleum-based plastic packaging will be replaced by biodegradable vinyl. People think of plastic packaging as an environmental threat, but even now biodegradable vinyl materials are being used in many industries. Although we still have to work on the price and quality of biodegradable products, we promise to provide a wide range of environmentally friendly packaging materials.

The growing ranks of environmentally conscious consumers demand that the packaging industry develop more innovative, eco-friendly packaging materials. Seonjin Innotech is working hard to meet these demands and expand the scope of the packaging industry.