In his opening remarks, James S. Arthurs congratulated Keehwa on its great achievement in development of laser cutting systems, opening a new manufacturing facility and obtaining the requisite quality certification. He said, ‘Gerber’s relationship with Keehwa has been ongoing for 28 years. Together we have experienced the substantial growth of our business in Korea in the apparel, automotive and technical textiles industries and we work closely with our customers to support them as they have expanded their production capabilities to other countries, most notably in Vietnam and China. There has long been a need for competitively priced laser cutters for automotive airbags and we are pleased to see Keehwa has filled this gap’.
According to Y. H. Shin, president of Keehwa, the building will be used exclusively to manufacture systems for the cutting of automotive airbags, technical textiles, signs and engraving. Shin stated that Keehwa now had four production-version laser cutters in operation in Korea following a three-year development and beta-test program. He added that the systems were CE certified for Europe and that Keehwa had already obtained ISO 9001 certification for the development, manufacture and after-sales service of its laser cutters.
Gerber Technology is a leading supplier of automated CAD/CAM/PLM solutions for industries including apparel, aerospace, composites, furniture, automotive, marine, and industrial fabrics. In Korea, Gerber Technology has more than 350 customers using over 1,500 systems and workstations which are fully supported and serviced by Keehwa.
Keehwa Hitech was founded in 1977 in Seoul.  Keehwa is a full-service organization, maintaining a substantial inventory of spare parts and demonstration systems, and a team of highly trained applications and service engineers. The company was appointed agent for Gerber Technology in 1980 and became a distributor in 1997.