The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and Journee Europeenne Composites (JEC Group), the largest composite industry organization in the world, signed an MOU on Tuesday aiming for closer cooperation.
The MOU-signing ceremony took place at Seoul City Hall and was attended by representatives of both organisations including Seoul’s vice mayor for Administrative Affairs Liu Gyeong-gee, JEC Group’s President and CEO Frederique Mutel, Seoul Tourism Policy’s general director Ahn Joon-ho, JEC Group’s secretary general Daniel Ageda, JEC Asia’s sales director Christian Strassburger, and Seoul’s Tourism Policy Division director Kim Jae-yong.
The MOU signing came ahead of JEC Group’s JEC Asia 2017 event which will take place for the first-time this November in Seoul. Under the terms of the MOU, both the SMG and the JEC Group pledged to cooperate on areas such as promotional efforts in attracting overseas buyers, Seoul hosting specialized tour programmes for JEC Asia 2017’s participants, and other avenues.
JEC Group President Mutel and Seoul Vice Mayor Liu
Seoul Vice Mayor Liu led the SMG’s delegation, welcoming JEC Group to Seoul and pledging the city’s support for the upcoming JEC Asia event. JEC Group’s President Mutel commended the strong support from the local governmental, industry, and research fields, which she highlighted as a “golden triangle” and stressed the importance of the Asian market for the composite industry which Mutel noted already made up 52 per cent of the global composites market.
JEC Group President Mutel and Seoul Vice Mayor Liu
The MOU-signing was the result of months of discussions between Seoul city and JEC Group stemming from a visit last year by President Mutel to Seoul in October 2016. In November 2016, an official announcement was made at the opening ceremony of JEC Asia 2016 in Singapore that the next JEC Asia conference would take place in Seoul for the first time and coinciding with the event’s 10th anniversary.
JEC Asia has previously been hosted the past 9 years, since its launch in 2008, in Singapore.
At the MOU ceremony, President Mutel shared her hopes for the event’s future in Seoul saying: “JEC will work closely with Seoul so it can grow into one of the world’s leading events in the industry.”
The Asian version of JEC World, will take place November 1-3 at Coex and is expected to draw some 3,000 participants from 40 countries. The event is overseen by the JEC Group, the largest composite organisation in the world with a network of 250,000 professionals from 100 countries.
