Top Packaging Strap Company Prepares Its Second Leap Forward

Shin Hyun-joo takes the helm; transformation into an eco-friendly company underway — developing biodegradable straps and replacing aging equipment

KIC Co., Ltd. (CEO Shin Hyun-joo), Korea's leading packaging strap company, is drawing attention as it prepares for a second leap forward by reinventing its image as an eco-friendly enterprise.

This year the company has succeeded in developing an "eco-friendly strap" using PLA, a biodegradable material. It has also wrapped up organizational restructuring through internal staffing reinforcements and significantly expanded the range of countries it targets for exports — accelerating its preparations for a new business environment.

These moves are understood to be part of a corporate reorganization that has emerged since March, when Shin Hyun-joo — eldest daughter of founder and senior advisor Shin Chung-sik — took office as the company's CEO.

Shifting Toward an Eco-Friendly Corporate Image

Over her roughly two decades at the company, CEO Shin has envisioned a corporate image aligned with the environmental spirit of the times. In particular, the company's flagship product — packaging strap — has had environmentally unfriendly aspects, given that its main raw materials are plastics based on PP or PE.

To address this, CEO Shin pursued the development of a strap using eco-friendly PLA material over the past three years. As a result, the company succeeded in raising tensile strength to 90% of that of conventional PP material, making commercialization possible.

Word of this development has already spread, and cases of overseas companies requesting samples to purchase the product have begun to appear — raising expectations that a new market for "eco-friendly straps" will soon take shape through exports.

KIC has also expanded and reorganized its existing production workforce system from a two-team, two-shift operation to a three-team, three-shift operation. At the same time, it has begun replacing existing equipment that had aged over the past 35 years.

While the three-team, three-shift system partly reinforces staffing to meet the labor standards required by the government, it also appears to be aimed at improving productivity through a better working environment — and, through the replacement of aging equipment, laying the groundwork for becoming an eco-friendly company.

Beyond this, KIC has newly reorganized its distribution network spanning some 20-odd countries and achieved considerable progress in expanding its distribution network for export-market growth — establishing additional distributorships in five regional markets, including China, Turkey, Egypt, Singapore, and the Middle East.

These moves by KIC represent achievements made from late last year through the first half of this year, and they are notable for aligning with CEO Shin Hyun-joo's inauguration in March.

CEO Shin majored in International Trade at university and completed a marketing program at the University of California, Berkeley. She handled public relations work during the period when Korea chaired the World Council of Credit Unions — an international financial organization — and honed her international business sense while working in the M&A division of Samsung Semiconductor.

In particular, over her roughly 20 years at KIC, she has shown a strong interest in overseas marketing and environmentally friendly corporate management.

KIC's Product Development Direction

The environmentally friendly corporate management that CEO Shin pursues is embodied in the "Eco-Friendly 4R Strategy": reduce plastic, reuse it, remake it, and ultimately return it to nature. This is also the direction of KIC's future product development.

KIC is the longest-standing company in its industry, having started out in 1973 as "Kyungin Chemical." In 1978 it became the first in the packaging industry to begin exporting plastic packaging straps to the United States, and in 2007 it began exclusively supplying PP strapping to Samsung Electronics and its overseas video-display subsidiaries.

Notably, since 2024 it has been supplying conductive bands to Samsung Electronics' semiconductor division and its partner companies, and it has recently earned recognition for its technical capabilities within the industry — including its successful development of an eco-friendly strap using PLA material.

KIC recorded revenue of 7.4 billion won last year and invests 5% of its revenue in research and development. It maintains a supply network across 25 countries worldwide, with exports accounting for 65% of total revenue.

KIC, the longest-standing company in the packaging industry, is pursuing a reinvention of its image as an eco-friendly enterprise in preparation for its second leap forward. In particular, the industry's attention is focused on the moves of CEO Shin Hyun-joo, who is leading this effort.

Interview

KIC's Eco-Friendly 4R Strategy

Acknowledging industrial reality — finding solutions within a future "circular structure"

"Reduce plastic, reuse it, remake it, and ultimately return it to nature."

CEO Shin Hyun-joo said, "Packaging strap is a small connecting link that binds the world's logistics industry together, and at the same time it is a plastic product used in large quantities." She added, "As one of the leading companies in Korea's packaging strap industry, KIC acknowledges this industrial reality while seeking the future of plastic within a 'circular structure.'"

She emphasized, "KIC has moved beyond the conventional environmental strategy of the 3Rs — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle — to propose a '4R Circular Plastic Strategy' that adds Return to Nature," explaining that "the future direction of corporate growth KIC pursues incorporates this 'Eco-Friendly 4R Strategy.'"

Regarding the 4R strategy, she said, "To reduce the amount of plastic used in the first place, we are developing technology that maintains the same packaging performance while reducing plastic usage through high-strength material design and production technology." She added, "Using high-strength strap materials makes it possible to produce thinner products that still withstand the same load — a way to structurally reduce plastic usage across the entire logistics industry."

She also noted, "Unlike ordinary consumer plastics, industrial straps are materials that can be used repeatedly — and in logistics centers, agriculture, and industrial packaging in particular, there are many cases where packaging straps are reused multiple times." She said, "We are pursuing an eco-friendly strategy that extends the lifespan of packaging materials by developing products with enhanced durability."

She further stated, "We are developing strap materials that utilize recycled plastic, and industrial packaging materials in particular have the advantage of easier recycling-quality control than consumer plastics." She explained, "Through recycled-feedstock-based strap production, composite-material blending technology, and quality-stabilization processes, we are using plastic not as mere waste but as a circular resource enabled by technology development."

Finally, CEO Shin said, "The strategy we are paying the most attention to is biodegradable material technology that allows plastic to break down in the natural environment after use." She added, "We are currently researching PLA-based biodegradable packaging straps, and we have succeeded in securing roughly 90% of the strength of conventional PP straps."