SMEs get momentum towards success

Native safety certification brand ‘S mark’ is reputable in approving quality, boosting exports and securing safety by giving 10,000^th certification to OSUNG LST on 25, October

25^th October

# “Sales of the products certified with S mark rose up by 120% while those failed to be certified witnessed reduced sales by 74%” by a manager of safe business department of OMRON, an automation components producer.

# “Our sales of products that earned S-mark went up five times in a year owing to an excellent word of mouth about their high quality” by a CEO of Sunkwang Electronic, a safety equipment manufacturer.

It seems that S-mark helps SMEs gain their competitiveness that certify safety of equipment or components which are widely used in the industrial work sites.

This mark, whose initial S stands for safety, is a certification symbol to guarantee safety of industrial machines or components. It was made to prevent occupational accidents fundamentally by distributing safe equipment and machines throughout the work places at the first stage.

Ever since the mark was introduced in 1997, exports of the certified products have been rising, with high quality helping SMEs be more competitive than before.

According to the data, some 10,000 types of products have been certified from 2,909 companies up until now. Especially last year, the number of certified products was 1,500 from 424 companies, the highest ever. This year, around 1,400 types of products are expected to be certified.

One of the reasons S-mark is wildly popular among domestic SMEs is because KOSHA supports companies whose products are certified with S-mark, to earn certification overseas as well such as CE, the Europe’s standard mark.

* From 1997 to 2011, 957 products from 163 companies were supported to get CE of the European Union after earning S-mark certification.

One of the examples is Reeltech which achieved S-mark in 2009 with its remote reel for easy change of wall lights. This company earned CE mark from SGS that has signed MOU with KOSHA, at the same time when it achieved S-mark. Now the Reeltech enjoys over 2 million dollars of sales in Europe and America Continents.

Export of S-mark certified products hovers around 1.78 billion dollars between 1997 and 2011.

As S-mark becomes popular across the world, more and more companies overseas apply for achieving the certificate. From 1997 to 2011, KOSHA received 3,760 applications for the certification from ten countries including Japan, Britain, France and Germany among which 3,240 were certified.

Meanwhile KOSHA gives the 10,000^th certificate to the test and inspection machine for LCD panels of OSUNG LST, the company located in A-san, Southern Chung-cheong province, on 25, October.

<Conferment ceremony of 10,000^th S-mark certificate>

Location: OSUNG LST in A-san, Southern Chung-cheong province

Date/time: 25, October 2012/ 11:00

Contact: +82-41-583-1597

Taking this opportunity, OSUNG LST obtained safety and credibility for their products which led to improve their brand names and competitiveness in export. Now the company raised this year’s sales goal from USD 150 billion to USD 200 billion

KOSHA’s president Hun-ki Baek said that defective machines and components weaken the competitiveness of companies, even threatening workers’ lives, adding that achievement of S-mark help them improve quality, increase exports overseas and protect workers at the same time.

End