Chungcheongnam-do

▲ Green building at Orestad. Denmark.

Despite the continuing economic recession in the world, Chungnam made significant progress in attracting foreign investments by signing deals worth 150 million dollars during the 12-day grand tour to Europe from September 16 through 27.

The mayor of Seosan and Rainer Schlicher, the head of the global business unit at Linde Group met in the headquarters of Linde Group in Munich on November 24, 2013, and signed an investment MOU worth 90 million dollars including 50 million-dollar foreign investment. On the following day, the mayor met with Marcus Heinemann, the vice president of Continental, and Robert H. Lee, the president of SK Continental E-motion, and concluded an investment MOU worth 236.3 million dollars including 100 million-dollar foreign direct investment.
 
Continental is an auto parts company with annual sales of 32.7 billion euros (about 47.5 trillion won). Linde is a global leading manufacturer in the field of industrial and special gas with annual sales of 15.3 billion euros (about 22.2 trillion won). Each of these companies will build a factory in the Auto Valley and Daesan Chemical Complex in Seosan respectively. Over the next five years, they are expected to generate about 2.6 trillion won in sales, 1.3 trillion won in added values and 1.9 trillion won in export, create 366 jobs and induce production in other fields worth about 2.6 trillion won.

The corps also visited Orestad, Denmark and Malmö, Sweden and observed their sustainable development policies.

Environmentally-friendly systems in the cities drew attention of the corps＊ members. In Orestad, one of the major green cities in Denmark, 55% of the residents used bicycles for daily transportation thanks to the city＊s environment policies. Malmö, a city selected in 2007 as the world＊s most desirable place to live by the United Nations Environment Program, boasted of apartment buildings equipped with a power generation system based on wind and solar energy and buses running on bio gas made from food wastes.

They visited Danish Crown AmbA, the world＊s largest meat exporter, to look around its advanced butchery and processing facilities and develop measures to apply them to Korea＊s livestock industry.

Their last stop was Potsdamer Platz in Berlin where Sony Center is located attracting over 20,000 tourists every day. They checked urban redevelopment conditions there.