Category Company Visits

On Tuesday 10th of March CITO representatives Linn Hantoft and Tommy Engqvist visited Business Sweden’s office in Seoul in South Korea. They encountered Axel Brangenfeldt and Sookyoung Lim who both work as consultants at the South Korean office. Business Sweden is a merger between Exportrådet and Invest Sweden in 2013 and assist Swedish companies to grow internationally as well as attracting strategic investments to Sweden. The Swedish Government and Swedish businesses jointly own them. Because of the merger and the joint ownership they do have a great knowledge about South Korea and also a large contact network. Business Sweden has about 50 offices worldwide and in East Asia they have offices in for example Taiwan, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. In many offices there are a lot of Swedish employees but in Asia overall there is not that many since there is a big language barrier and cultural differences in all of these countries. In the Seoul office there are three Swedish employees out of about 10 people.

On Monday 9th of March CITO representatives Linn Hantoft and Tommy Engqvist visited Höganäs in Seoul, South Korea. They met Frank Song who is the Country Manager of South Korea. Frank has worked for Höganäs for 18 years and started there because he was tempted to work with sales for a foreign company. Höganäs was a good choice because he had a background in Material Science. The company’s major product is iron metal powder, which is used in a wide range of products instead of steel to reduce cost. The metal powder is pressed into a specific shape and then heated up in order to harden. It is commonly used for devices in engines in the automobile industry and for fast welding speed in the shipbuilding industry which both are important industries in South Korea.

On Tuesday 10th of March CITO representatives Linn Hantoft and Tommy Engqvist met up with the Service Manager Viktor Safar at Scania Korea. The meeting point was at Scania’s office in Seoul, South Korea. Scania is a Swedish manufacturer of trucks, buses and engines present all over the world. In South Korea their primary product lines are trucks, but engines are also part of their product portfolio.

On 12th of december, the whole CITO office participated in SKF’s case study in Taipei. SKF was founded in 1907 and is one of Swedens biggest companies, with around 50,000 employees, and presence on 165 sites in 28 countries around the world. SKF is mostly known for their bearings, but has a wider range of products. The Taipei factory is specialized in linear motion, with the so called “rail guides”, which make sure that heavy components can easily move back and forth on its track.

On the 24th of November the three CITO representatives Tommy Engqvist, Kasper Westman and Love Carlson visited the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Taipei. The CITO representatives met up with the CEO Louise Byström and conducted an interview with her to learn more about the Chamber and their activities.

Today, on the 6th of June, Pascal Csikasz and Marcus Kalander visited Ericsson’s office in Manila. We were welcomed by Sales Manager Hans Hermenius, who has been at this location for three years. We were given a presentation about Ericsson’s operations in the Philippines and what their market looks like there today.

Today, on the 5th of June, Pascal Csikasz and Marcus Kalander visited Swedish Match’s production plant of lighters in Manila. There we were recieved by Mattias, who is the current Finance & IT Manager on the site, and by Martin, who is set to fill this position in a few weeks. We were given a tour around the factory together with the production manager, and later we got to hear more about Swedish Match’s products, operations, and history, both in the Philippines and world wide.

On Wednesday 26th of March it was time to meet up with Atlas Copco (AC Holding) at their Tokyo office. We had the honor to meet the General Manager, Thomas Östergren, and the Holding HR Manager, Grace Tokue Sumoto, who both have worked at AC for several years.

During the afternoon of May 23th, Anna Ohlin and Sofie Weidenlöv visited Volvo Trucks in Beijing. The CITO representatives were welcomed by Mr. Claes Svedberg, senior vice president at China Joint Ventures. The office was located in an office building where two floors where dedicated to Vovlo Trucks but with different focus areas.

The CITO representatives Anna Ohlin and Sofie Weidenlöv continued their company visits in Beijing by visiting Beijing’s brand new IKEA store – Beijing Xihongmen, at the 22nd of May. The store opened in November 2013 as the second IKEA store in Beijing and the 15th in China. A large shopping mall, owned by IKEA, is to be connected to the store and will be opened later this year, which makes this facility the largest single investment in the history of IKEA.