A highly innovative market and big players in a broad field of application sectors – these are the key competitive advantages that induce the German light weight technologies and solutions producers to increasingly shift their attention to the cutting-edge leader South Korea. Withstanding the tectonic shifts caused by the global pandemic COVID-19, Korea continues to promise massive growth and ever-increasing importance for the industry. In order to enable Korean-German collaboration, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) has established the “MEP Business Development Program Korea-Germany on lightweight technologies”, which, over the course of three years, offered an array of events that brought both countries closer together.

This project has been realized on behalf of the BMWK by the German consulting company SBS systems for business solutions in collaboration with the Korean-German Chamber of Commerce (KGCC). 

With this project the BMWK has been supporting small-to-medium sized German companies in the filed of the lightweight technologies in their effort to export German technology to the world. The project succeded to provide German players first-hand insights in business practices in Korea and the Korean light weight industry and foster further business collaborations.

The first two project years have seen three German company delegations to Korea, each of the duration of one week, between July 2022 to November 2023, and one Korean delegation trip to Germany in June 2023. Thereby the German companies engaged with the Korean industry and explored possibilities for collaborations, had fruitful exchanges and already established concrete business relations.

The successful implementation of solid business relations on both sides caused the extension of the project to another year. Therefore in 2024 took place other two higlights in fostering the Korean-German business collaboration in the field of lightweight solutions: we had the pleasure to welcome a Korean Delegation to Germany from in April 2024. In five days we had the honour to host a high level delegation of Korean companies and Institutes in Germany. Besides several company visits the delegation has joined the Lightweighting Summin at Hanover Messe on Thuesday, 23rd.

The last business trip of our program took place from October 21st to 25th 2024. The fourth visit to Korea, brought together our German lightweight business delegation with new interested sector companies to Busan and Seoul for a five days “Performance Show of the German Lightweight Industry”. Outstanding German companies showed up in Korea to connect again with the Korean lightweight industry and enter more deeply into technical questions and enforce their business realtions. The participation at the Carbon Korea Exhibition in Seoul has been part of the program and put the German-Korean collaboration on lightweighting solutions on a new level!