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| Purmil's headquarters in Youngdeongpo District, Seoul / Yonhap |
By Kim Jae-heun
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| Purmil CEO Shin Dong-hwan |
Shin, second son of company founder and Chairman Shin Jun-ho, took office in 2018, which is when Purmil started to see its business performance decline.
The dairy firm showed 257.5 billion won ($180.5 million) in sales for 2017, but sales decreased every year to reach 180 billion won as of last year.
The company's operating profit also went into a deficit of 1.5 billion won in 2018 and its losses widened to 12.4 billion won as of last year.
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| Purmil Chairman Shin Jun-ho |
"At some point, Purmil's greatest selling point became its prices, not quality. The dairy firm is said to use the oldest production facility in the local market. Many dairy companies here invest in their equipment to introduce new products, but Purmil turned its back on that. It only made slight changes to its existing products and the company was left behind by trends in the rapidly changing market," a local dairy firm official said.
Purmil's union also shared the same opinion.
"CEO Shin was only interested in collecting toy figurines. He was not aware of the changing market trends and he neither pursued business diversification nor invested in new production facilities. He was too complacent," the union said in a statement released on Oct. 18.
Purmil was founded by the elder Shin in April 2007, after the company was spun off from Lotte Group. Shin Jun-ho is the younger brother of the late Lotte Group Honorary Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho.
