The Korea Herald, in collaboration with the Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute, is presenting a series of articles introducing small but promising environmental tech firms. The following is the seventh installment. ― Ed.


From deep sea to tap water, water treatment covers a wide range of industries and markets. This week’s Korea Herald choice for Green Innovator stands at the very end of the spectrum, manufacturing filters for household water purifiers.

For Microfilter Co., the main mission is to find the right recipe for drinking water at home, one that fits sophisticated customer demand on water purity, flow rate and the subtle and often inexplicable factors like taste and smell.

“Many say water from Chungho purifiers tastes best. That’s when I feel most proud,” Lee Kee-hyoung, the firm’s chief executive, said during a recent interview. 

The Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province-based firm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chungho and supplies filters to the parent firm which is the nation’s second-largest maker of residential water purifiers.

Of course, Microfilter doesn’t add anything artificial to make water tastier. What makes its filters loved by customers here is the right mix of water treatment technologies such as reverse osmosis and the know-how in handling an array of variables, which Lee said is hard to gauge numerically.

“The competitiveness of a water filter company is not just in its purification capacity. A filter with the maximum level of purification can be a waste, if it doesn’t ensure abundant supplies of filtered water,” Lee said. In fact, local water authorities tout that it is safe to drink water from the tap.

Microfilter aims to make products at the right level of purification, with a low defection rate, easy to replace and reasonably priced, he explained.

Over a half of homes and offices in Korea are equipped with water purifiers, making growth elusive for filter suppliers.

To surmount the challenge, Microfilter has been, for some years already, diversifying its product portfolio and is now aggressively targeting overseas markets.

Filters for counter-top water purifiers, once the mainstay of its revenue, account for 35 percent of its total sales now. Filters for drinking water dispenser of refrigerators take up 45 percent, with the rest coming from other products such as reverse osmosis filter systems for various applications and under-sink water filters.

“For now, the refrigerator market will drive our growth,” Lee said. Microfilter supplies to Samsung and LG, both global household brands in refrigerators.

“As quality of life improves in many developing countries, people’s interest in drinking water and their willingness to spend money on it will grow. There will be plenty opportunities there for us,” the CEO said.

Priority markets are India and other fast-growing economies in Asia and the Middle East, he added.

“We currently sell in 27 different countries, but the number will rise to 40 next year,” he said.

To grab a share of the global market, the company, which hires just 150 staff and has scant global sales resources, must go against established brands such as Brita, 3M and P&G.

Yet, Lee believes that his company does stand a chance, if it sticks to what it has been doing in Korea ― cater to the needs, desires and whims of the consumers and produce tailored products at reasonable prices.

Its experience in China reinforced his faith.

“Tap water in China contains larger participles compared to that of Korea and there is also greater public concern about heavy metal remnants in drinking water. We developed filters to address such issues,” he said.

Thanks to such efforts, the company set up a joint venture with Midea, a Chinese home appliances maker, in 2008 and has since been producing filters for Midea water purifiers.

Currently, it is partnering with a major U.S. water firm to produce under-sink filters suitable for the American market.

Microfilter was started in 1996 as a joint venture between Chungho and U.S. firm Omnipure Filter Co. It separated with the U.S. firm and renamed itself to Microfilter.

The unlisted firm reported revenues of 43 billion won in 2011 and expects about 53 billion won this year, half of the sales from oversea markets. It aims to break the 100 billion mark in sales the next two to three years.

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)