Gyeongbuk Province Launches K-Kitchen Promotion Committee... Fostering New Industries by Integrating Advanced Technology into Food Service

Co-CEOs Lee Cheol-woo and Lee Kang-deok

Participation of 10 Companies Including Neuromeka

On the 26th, Gyeongbuk Province proactively formed the ‘K-Kitchen Promotion Committee’ (hereinafter referred to as the Promotion Committee) and held its launch ceremony to secure the dominance of K-Kitchen, which will sustain the next 100 years of the future.

The launch ceremony, held in the afternoon at Pohang City Hall, was hosted by Gyeongbuk Province and organized by Pohang City and Gyeongbuk Technopark, with about 100 attendees including related companies, universities, private associations, and experts and officials from affiliated organizations.

The Promotion Committee is co-chaired by Lee Cheol-woo, Governor of Gyeongbuk Province; Lee Kang-deok, Mayor of Pohang; Kim Moo-hwan, President of POSTECH; and Lee Ki-won, Chairman of the Korea FoodTech Council. Seventeen members from academia, experts, companies, and related organizations participate as committee members, serving as the central body for fostering the food tech industry in Gyeongbuk Province going forward.

K-Kitchen promotion committee members are touring the NeuroMeca workplace, a collaborative robot company in Pohang city.

The Promotion Committee will serve as an industry-academia-research-government cooperation body to foster new food tech industries that integrate advanced technologies such as robotics and AI into the food and dining industries. It will establish standards for future projects and seek development strategies.

To this end, four working groups have been established under the Promotion Committee, each tasked with identifying support projects based on corporate demands and setting food tech technology standards.

The launch ceremony began with a visit to the ‘Neuromeka’ factory (CEO Park Jong-hoon) located in the Yeongilman General Industrial Complex in Pohang.

Neuromeka is a representative food tech company in Gyeongbuk that signed a memorandum of understanding with Gyeongbuk Province and Pohang City in December last year, relocated its factory from Daejeon to Pohang, and completed its mass production system.

Following this, at the Pohang City Hall conference room, Professor Lee Ki-won from Seoul National University delivered a keynote speech titled ‘Korea, World FoodTech Center.’ This was followed by a policy briefing on government food tech policy directions by Kang Hye-young, Director of the Food Tech Policy Division at the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, and a thematic presentation on the prospects and development directions of the K-Kitchen project by Professor Park Joo-hong of POSTECH.

The mutual cooperation signing ceremony of 10 private companies participating in the K-Kitchen project included companies in the food tech fields such as collaborative robots, service robots, food printing, food companies, dining companies, and AI.

These companies will reside in the Food Tech Convergence Support Center and the Innovation Special Zone, exchanging information and know-how on investment and research and development and cooperating with each other.

The 17-member Promotion Committee includes the four co-chairs: Lee Cheol-woo, Governor of Gyeongbuk Province; Lee Kang-deok, Mayor of Pohang; Kim Moo-hwan, President of POSTECH; and Lee Ki-won, Chairman of the Korea FoodTech Council. In addition, five academic experts including Kim Won-gil, Head of the Gyeongsangbuk-do branch of the Korea Food Service Industry Association; Professor Jang Jae-ho of Seoul National University’s Department of Food Engineering; Professor Park Joo-hong of POSTECH; Professor Kim Mi-rim of Daegu Haany University; and Lee Ji-sang, Chairman of the Gyeongbuk ICT Convergence Industry Promotion Association participate. Three industry representatives including Park Jong-hoon, CEO of Neuromeka; Kwak In-beom, CEO of Polaris 3D; and Lee Dong-hoon, Vice President of Ourhome also participate. Additionally, five representatives from related organizations participate: Yeo Jun-gu, Director of the Korea Institute of Robot Convergence; Ha In-sung, Director of Gyeongbuk Technopark; Song Kyung-chang, Director of Gyeongbuk Economic Promotion Agency; Lee Uk-yeol, CEO of Gyeongbuk Happiness Foundation; and Bae Young-ho, Director of Pohang Technopark.

The participating companies are Neuromeka, Polaris 3D, Ourhome, LSB, Jeil Technology, Pin Research Institute, Rock Chef, BAB, Intops, and Beyond Honeycomb, totaling 10 companies.

Gyeongbuk Province, in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, will open and operate a Food Tech contract department at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) starting this year to train food tech personnel. It will actively promote the operation of the Food Tech Research Support Center for technology development and company fostering, as well as technology commercialization projects.

In addition, plans are underway to build a Food Tech Convergence Support Center to create a food tech innovation cluster based on IoT, Big Data, and AI, including collaborative robots and service robots. The province also plans to designate an innovation special zone by concentrating food tech-related industry, government, and academia clusters to intensively foster the food tech industry.

Governor Lee Cheol-woo of Gyeongbuk Province stated, “We will develop the food tech industry, which integrates food and technology, as a future 100-year industry of Gyeongbuk alongside the great transformation of Gyeongbuk agriculture, setting global standards for food tech.” He added, “We will actively strive so that private companies, local universities, and related organizations cooperate to enable Gyeongbuk Province to take the lead in the food tech dominance.”

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