The city of Busan is accelerating an industrial restructuring centered on anchor companies, aiming to "change the game in the regional manufacturing sector." The initiative activates a "manufacturing structural innovation model" that elevates the entire cooperative ecosystem by anchoring it around a small number of core firms.
Busan announced on the 17th that it has finalized four new companies for its "2026 Busan-Type Anchor Company Fostering Support Project" and will provide intensive support over the next three years. The selected firms, categorized by growth stage, are JMJ (Pre-Anchor), BMT and Halla IMS (Anchor), and Daeyang Electric (Top-tier Anchor). These companies received high marks for technological competitiveness, global scalability, cooperative networks, and contributions to job creation.
The project emphasizes selection and concentration. Moving away from the conventional approach of dispersing resources across the regional industry, the strategy treats companies with proven growth potential as "anchors" to pull the entire industrial ecosystem forward. Considering the linkage effects with upstream and downstream small and medium-sized enterprises, the structure aims to translate "the growth of one company" into "the shared growth of many companies."
The city will inject up to 500 million won in project funding per selected firm, providing package support covering the full cycle from research and development (R&D) to commercialization and overseas expansion. It has built a "comprehensive support system" that designs customized growth strategies through in-depth consulting for each company and links patents, certifications, testing, and global market development.
Early results have already been confirmed. First- and second-cohort anchor companies saw their 2025 revenue rise 15.6% from the previous year, while employment grew 13.7%. External capital inflows also increased, with 14 R&D projects worth 38.6 billion won secured. Officials assess that the program functions as a "growth accelerator" rather than a simple subsidy.
The city's expectations for the project extend beyond simply fostering companies. Through the "Manucorn Project," which will invest a total of 11.7 billion won by 2029, Busan plans to cultivate manufacturing firms with corporate values of around 1 trillion won. From this year, the city has placed particular emphasis on building an "AI-based manufacturing ecosystem," with artificial intelligence transformation (AX) set as the core axis and with anchor firms and their partners participating together.
This is a strategic choice in response to a paradigm shift in global manufacturing competition. As data- and AI-based process innovation, rather than simple production competitiveness, increasingly determines corporate competitiveness, officials judge that regional manufacturing must also make the leap from "digital transformation (DX) to artificial intelligence transformation (AX)."
The selection process has also been strengthened with "data-based screening." The city introduced a "five-stage verification system" that combines the AI evaluation systems of the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund and the Korea Technology Finance Corporation to precisely analyze technological capabilities, audition-style presentation evaluations involving experts and citizen panels, and on-site inspections of manufacturing operations. The system verifies not only growth potential but also execution capability and regional ripple effects in a multidimensional manner.
"This project is not one that nurtures a few companies, but a project that redesigns the industrial structure," a city official said. "We will reorganize supply chains and cooperative networks around core companies and transition to AI-based manufacturing to change the fundamental character of the regional economy."
