The DGFEZ team interviewed TaeguTec President Moshe Sharon to learn more about TaeguTec, the largest cutting tools manufacturer in Korea, and doing business in South Korea.

Q1. Why did you decide to invest in the city of Daegu?
A. Actually it was a coincidence because the factory itself Korea Tungsten Company was located in the city of Daegu and its headquarters were located in Seoul. So we came to acquire the company which was in Daegu and we enjoyed and we were lucky to have the location from the beginning in Daegu. We also transferred all the operation from Seoul – the management, the R&D, everything to the site here in Daegu. Nowadays the organization, the complete organization is in the city of Daegu and we have branches all over Korea.

Q2. Can you tell me about quality of human resources in Daegu?
A. I can summarize from the first sentence – the quality of human resources in Daegu is the first level, the highest level. The background of it is the abundance of universities existing in Daegu and institutions existing in Daegu. Teaching and training scientists and engineers into the tens of thousands every year. And this is actually the group of people which are candidates to be recruited by TaeguTec along the years.

Q3. Can you tell me about your company’s logistics system?
A. Actually as to the logistics, we have a complete system and this connected from the fact that we are in Daegu we supply most of our products through the airports in Incheon and from the ports in the ship, sea, flight method. And we have no interference, no problem to ship our goods all over the world from the ports of Korea, this regarding even the location of the company. As to the influence of the Free Trade Agreements with the U.S. and with the European Union, it has a very good element of influence as to the competitivity which it creates for our products around the world as we set in Europe and in the Unites States. But more than this, in our case we have a leading position in the local markets supplying to all those companies which actually also in their turn exports, so actually we are increasing the supply into the local customers which supply products and technology to the export to the European Union and to the United States and can increase our export to the European Union and to the United States because of the competitivity created by the tariffs or by cancelling the tariffs of the importation taxes to this country of our products.

Q4. What are the benefits of investing in Daegu?
A. The biggest benefit we have investing in Daegu is to be surrounded by a positive attitude, by a positive environment of support and of help and of understanding what an investor needs and what an industry needs in order to succeed and this is like an infrastructure like any other infrastructure like communication and roads. Any industrialist, any investment company needs this environment and we were very lucky to have it here in Daegu.