KOTRA Organizes Buyers’ Meetings with 139 Buyers from 65 Countries and 15 UN-Related Clients
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) together organized two major conferences at COEX in Gangnam, Seoul, on March 15, to support the growing exports of Korean-made medical devices, which have increasingly emerged as important consumer goods.
The Buyers’ Meeting on Medical Device Exports was organized as part of the Korea International Medical and Hospital Equipment Show (KIMES), a leading fair that showcases the latest developments in medical device technology. The goal was to support the globalization of exhibitions of Korean-made medical devices and also to invite buyers from both advanced and emerging markets to diversify markets for those devices. The Meeting with UN-Related Clients involved inviting the public procurement officers of major UN-related organizations, including the United Nations Procurement Division (UNPD), that are important buyers of medical devices, with the goal to expand the share of Korean-made medical devices on the international public procurement market through briefings and meetings with representatives and procurement vendors of those organizations.
Brett Knappe, Vice-President of Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device company, gave a keynote address entitled “The Future Outlook of the Medical Device Industry,” envisioning the introduction of patient-centered treatment procedures, the emergence of posttreatment follow-up solutions, the convergence and localization of medical technologies and services, and the arrival of destructive innovation that would shatter the boundaries of the medical device industry as the likely important developments in the future.
The 225 medical device companies that participated in the two meetings together handled over 1,400 meetings with invited buyers and signed new export contracts and memoranda of understanding in 21 of those meetings, generating USD 11 million worth of medical device exports.
Lee Jae-suk, the business director at i-SENS, a Korean manufacturer of blood glucose monitors, commented: “Because this year’s meeting was held as part of a major exhibition on medical devices, it was easier for us to invite buyers and hold satisfactory meetings. As the quality of Korean-made medical devices continues to improve, we expect to have even more good results in the future.”
Kim Du-yeong, head of the Strategic Business Division at KOTRA, explained: “We exerted efforts to invite influential buyers from diverse countries to expand the overseas markets for Korean-made medical devices. We expect this year’s event to serve as a lever for the growth of Korean medical device exports. We will continue to exert efforts to pioneer new markets for Korean-made medical devices by sending special delegations to various regions, including South America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.”
Source : Invest Korea (March 16, 2018)