How Does KOTRA Support Medical Device Manufacturers' Exports?

KOTRA Experienced K-Quarantine Export Success
Establishing Year-Round Medical Device Export Support System through Digitalization
Simultaneous Support for Customized Export Difficulties for Companies

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Sun-mi] Serbia, a medically underdeveloped region. In early March 2020, upon confirming the Serbia emergency medical device procurement project, KOTRA identified communication difficulties between local buyers and Korean companies, as well as challenges such as strengthened quarantine measures and a sharp increase in logistics costs.

In response, KOTRA provided one-stop support from identifying local demand to discovering manufacturers and transportation, found Korean manufacturers with performance and specifications suitable for Serbia's needs, provided information on Korean products to Serbia, coordinated transportation schedules, and transported Korean medical devices via charter flights five times in total. As a result, about $5 million in export contracts were achieved with 14 companies, establishing the K-Medical brand locally in Serbia and creating linked export opportunities.

Building on the K-quarantine export achievements over the past two years during the COVID-19 spread, KOTRA is actively promoting export support for domestic medical device manufacturers this year. First, it established a year-round export support system for medical devices through digitalization.

Since direct export marketing activities such as overseas business trips became impossible after COVID-19, Korean companies have been using video consultations as a primary export marketing tool.

This year, KOTRA plans to implement export support projects targeting 200 GMEP participating companies in collaboration with 26 overseas trade centers wishing to promote domestic medical device export support projects (holding a total of 26 export consultation meetings and market entry strategy webinars under trade center cooperation). Companies matched with specific demand through video consultations can receive assistance such as invitations to visit Korea (e.g., GMEP 2023) and local offline business development (after the COVID-19 situation stabilizes).

Furthermore, KOTRA will also work on generating results through customized export difficulty support for companies.

Although companies face various difficulties in pioneering export markets, existing standardized projects sometimes cannot fully support all company requests. Therefore, KOTRA plans to implement a ‘Bio-Medical Customized Support Project’ targeting companies that find it difficult to receive support through existing KOTRA projects or wish for close support from KOTRA headquarters and trade centers in pioneering export markets.

The scale is about 20 companies, and support activities utilizing KOTRA’s unique capabilities such as research and analysis of target countries for domestic companies’ market entry, strategy establishment, and local marketing activities will be provided. The project cost is about 10 million KRW per company, of which companies only need to bear about 30%.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.