The Dayou Group has no plans to merge its household appliance affiliate Dayou Winia with its newly acquired affiliate Daewoo, according to a top executive Wednesday.

“We are benchmarking the operating strategy of Hyundai and Kia Motors,” said Cho Sang-ho, vice president at Dayou Group, at a press conference Wednesday at The Plaza Hotel Seoul.

“The two companies merged certain parts of their operations but kept others separate. We plan to pursue growth in both (Dayou Winia and Daewoo) through that strategy. We have no plans to merge.”

Dayou plans to keep sales and manufacturing separate between the two companies while merging research and development, and distribution.

For this year, the goal of the company is to normalize operations at financially strapped Daewoo, turning to the black this year and increasing operating profit to 5 percent by 2019.

Dayou acquired Daewoo Electronics at the end of February. The company said that it hoped to create synergy between Dayou Winia’s strength in distribution in Korea and the overseas sales network of Daewoo.

“For example, Dayou Winia could use its expertise in fermentation to develop products for other countries that have fermented foods in their cuisine,” said Ahn Byoung-deok, who heads strategic planning at Daewoo. 

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)