Pictured above: the DPRK’s two CNC plants mentioned in the post below. (L) Ryonha Factory in Pyongyang, (R) Ryonha Factory in Huichon
From the Choson Exchange web page:
The company that is tasked with producing and selling CNC is Ryonha, through its subsidiary, Unsan. The company had a booth at the recent International Trade Fair in Rason, held in North Korea’s Special Economic Zone in the far Northeast, bordering Russia and China. Their booth was staffed by a Vice President and – as one might expect – attracted lots of attention from the locals in attendance.
The president claimed annual exports of 30,000,000 euros to Europe, South America and South East Asia. He didn’t have exact details on profits, but mentioned that Unsan imported 10,000,000 euro worth of parts, mostly from Europe, such as control units and electronic relays Siemens and Arno. Their main CNC factory is 40,000 sq. meters and the “biggest in the world” according to the manager. They have two facilities, one in Pyongyang and one in Jagang with 12,000 employees in total. They want to open a factory in Rason, ideally without investors. Prices were said to be: 150,000 EUR for a European made CNC machine but only 52,000 EUR for an equivalent machine made in the DPRK, with the “same quality”.
Unfortunately for Ryonha, it seems to be a subsidiary of the Korea Ryonbong General Corporation, which is under UN sanctions as a WMD proliferator. This no doubt impacts Ryonha’s ability to market itself to customers abroad. Ryonha also doesn’t seem to have a website, which can’t help, either.
Should Ryonha’s parent corporation be taken off the UN’s list of designated proliferators, it will find easier access to a global CNC market that was $6.1 billion in 2007, before the financial crisis hit. The market has contracted since then, as the crisis left a global glut in inventory in 2009, which has taken well into 2011 to clear. The sharply reduced demand, particularly from automakers, has made the CNC market particularly competitive, though a sustained economic recovery would eventually drag the industry back up to pre-crisis levels.
It’s difficult to know what kind of impact Ryonha might have on the global CNC industry, as customers and vendors alike are probably reluctant to trumpet where their machines are made. One of the effects of sanctions has been that companies try to hide their tracks when conducting business with the DPRK, even when the industry is unrelated to sanctioned items. This is sometimes done through an extra layer (or two) of outsourced contracts, or with textiles, sometimes just label-switching. This is tough to do with bigger machines, of course, leaving North Korean CNC machines facing perhaps understandable prejudices.
Its impact on the domestic market will be more significant, of course, reducing the need to spend hard currency on imported CNC machines from China and elsewhere. Perhaps then, this import substitution will allow the DPRK to use that unspent capital on projects that actually benefit the daily lives of its citizens.
