Samyang Corporation, a core affiliate of Samyang Group, has been making noticeable moves, including acquiring a flavor company and teaming up with Musinsa, a fashion platform, to launch T-shirts. The push aims to shed its image as a traditional food-ingredient company centered on sugar and flour by strengthening specialty (high value-added) businesses, while also seen as an effort to raise corporate identity awareness that has been overshadowed by similarly named Samyang Foods.
Samyang Corporation, founded in 1924, is the origin of Samyang Group and operates food and chemical businesses. It owns the flagship food brand "Q.One," and because the names are the same, it is often confused with Samyang Foods, famous for the Buldak brand, but it is a completely different company.
According to related industries on the 10th, Samyang Corporation recently acquired Soda Aromatic, regarded as one of Japan's five major flavor corporations, for about 390 billion won. It is Samyang Group's first acquisition of a Japanese company and its first case in the food business institutional sector of securing an overseas foothold through mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Soda Aromatic is a corporation focused on food flavors and fragrance businesses for perfumes and cosmetics. It has production bases in five Asian countries—Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore—and serves about 1,000 client companies.
Through this acquisition, Samyang Corporation plans to move beyond a food business structure centered on basic ingredients such as sugar, flour and starch sugar, and expand into flavors and fragrances, which are classified as specialty businesses. The goal is to evolve into a comprehensive solution corporations that designs taste, texture and aroma, going beyond simple food ingredient supply. The company also plans to pursue linking Soda Aromatic's global customer network with its allulose and dietary fiber businesses.
What stands out is that Samyang Corporation is steadily focusing on expanding specialty businesses and promoting its brand despite a tough business environment. The company was sanctioned by the Korea Fair Trade Commission last year for sugar price collusion and is also under investigation over alleged collusion in flour and starch sugar prices. With revenue and operating profit declining last year, the burden on scale and profitability has grown.
Sugar and flour have long been the core businesses driving Samyang Corporation's growth. But as market growth slows and regulatory risks increase, the need to secure new growth engines is growing. Observers say the company's focus on fostering specialty businesses such as allulose, dietary fiber and personal care materials is related to this.
In fact, Samyang Group has expanded investment in specialty businesses over the past several years. Starting with personal care materials corporation KCI in 2017, it acquired NC Chem, a photoresist raw material corporation for semiconductors, in 2021; Verdant, a global personal care materials corporation, in 2023; and Lubrizol Elmendorf last year. The latest Soda Aromatic acquisition is also seen as an extension of its strategy to expand its specialty business portfolio.
Along with shifting its business structure, the company is also working to refresh its corporate image. While the Samyang name is widely known, many consumers think first of Samyang Foods, maker of Buldak spicy ramyeon, rather than Samyang Corporation. It is increasingly seen as just as important to raise awareness of Samyang Corporation itself as it is to change its business structure.
Recently, it collaborated with the fashion platform Musinsa to unveil a limited-edition T-shirt line, "Specialty." The company produced 11 T-shirt designs featuring phrases that play on misunderstandings about its business and consumers' perceptions, such as "Not your ordinary tee, it's Specialty" and "A tee you shouldn't wear when eating ramyeon."
The collaboration stemmed from a corporate ad released last year. Comments on the ad included reactions such as "Isn't that the company that makes ramyeon?" "I thought the 'tee' in specialty was tea," and "If you release T-shirts, I'll buy one," which the company then turned into actual products.
Last year, to mark its 100th anniversary, Samyang Group released a "Specialty" corporate ad featuring actor Park Jeong-min as its model. It explained its core businesses—food, chemicals and biopharmaceuticals—in easy terms for the general public and humorously addressed consumers' confusion with Samyang Foods, drawing attention.
The ad has surpassed 66 million cumulative views. A subsequent corporate ad using MBTI (personality type test) also topped 120 million cumulative views, attracting consumer interest. In April, the company also expanded touchpoints with younger consumers by launching its in-house cosmetics brand About Me on Musinsa Beauty.
The company says its recent branding push is unrelated to specific issues such as Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) sanctions. A Samyang Corporation official said, "For issues the company faces, we are continuously pursuing necessary improvements," adding, "Improving brand awareness and communicating with stakeholders are also important tasks, so this ad campaign is being carried out consistently under the group's mid- to long-term brand strategy, regardless of specific issues."
The official added, "Samyang Group has pursued specialty businesses as a strategy for sustained growth based on differentiated technology and customer-tailored solutions," and "we plan to continue strengthening our global specialty business competitiveness and steadily expand our related business portfolio."