South Korea’s first aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) company Korea Aviation Engineering & Maintenance Service (KAEMS) on Tuesday has opened a new aircraft MRO center in Sacheon, a southern city of Korea, aiming to nurture the site as an aviation MRO hub in Asia.

With the building, KAEMS now is able to work on MRO for 100 aircrafts of B737. It is licensed to work on A320 plane and larger aircrafts like B787.

Currently, about 200 B737 aircrafts are in operation in Korea. Airliners had to send most of the carriers to other countries due to lack of capacity at home.

“As the country’s representative MRO business, KAEMS will use its geographical advantages to attract orders from Japan and expand the business to depot maintenance for military carriers,” said Cho Youn-ki, president and CEO of KAEMS.

KAEMS, the country’s first aviation MRO company, was launched in July 2018 on joint investments from seven Korean companies to lessen foreign reliance on aircraft maintenance. The largest shareholder is Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. (KAI) with 66 percent. Other stakeholders include Korea Airports Corp. with 20 percent, BNK Financial Group with 9 percent and Jeju Air and other three firms with 5 percent.

Sacheon city and South Gyeongsang provincial governments assigned 150 billion won in budget to build aircraft MRO infrastructure.

By Han Woo-ram and Lee Ha-yeon

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