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Hyundai supplier finds home in Tallassee
By David Goodwin - News Editor
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Tony Kwon, president of Hanil Tube of Korea, presents Tallassee Mayor Bobby Payne with a Korean ceramic vase at the grand opening of the Tier One Hyundai supplier’s 54,000 square foot plant Thursday. -- Herald Photo/David Goodwin
Tallassee became the latest Alabama city to benefit from the state’s transformation to a hotbed of automotive manufacturing, as leaders marked the grand opening of Hanil Tube’s first U.S. plant.
Hanil Tube (and its new subsidiary Hanil USA) makes the tubing that moves fuel and brake or steering fluids in Hyundai’s Montgomery-made Sonata and Santa Fe automobiles.
“We make the car go; we make the car stop,” Hanil USA employee Darcy Swan said during a public tour of the plant Thursday.
State, county and city leaders welcomed South Korea-based Hanil Tubes’ president Tony Kwon and others for the grand opening of the company’s 54,000 square foot facility on Highway 229 near the Tallassee city limit.
“They make a precise, exact product; you have to work like a surgeon,” Tallassee Mayor Bobby Payne said. “It has upgraded the (skills of) the people of Tallassee. This is a great time to be mayor.”
The plant already employs 89 Elmore County workers, and when they begin a new contract to supply the Kia factory in LaGrange, Ga., that number will grow to 120.
“We made a great choice,” Kwon said, “and it’s been a remarkable success already. There are good growing opportunities here.”
Kwon discovered Tallassee at a crucial moment for his company. He’d been driving around central Alabama for more than a year, looking for a good site for the manufacturing facility he needed to honor a lucrative Tier One supplier deal with Hyundai Motor Manufacturing America.
Deals for potential sites in Greenville, Selma and Opelika fell apart, Kwon said, and “Hyundai was pushing and calling me every day.”
“They said they would cancel the order if it took longer,” he said.
But then Kwon found Tallassee, and connected with Tallassee Industrial Board Chairman Rick Dorley. There was a building Hanil USA could rent for the short term, he told Kwon, to get them moving fast enough to preserve the supply deal with Hyundai.
As he showed Kwon around Elmore County, introducing the Korean business magnate to his potential workforce, the two became friends, both men said. They learned that, despite the thousands of miles which separate their hometowns, they shared a strong Christian faith. Dorley even took Kwon to church with him.
“We talked about our churches, and he listened to me preach one Sunday,” Dorley said. “Tony said, ‘I’ve heard him preach, and I’ve been in negotiations with him. I believe he’s a better negotiator than a preacher.’”
Despite language and cultural barriers, Payne, Dorley and Kwon spoke fondly of their time getting to know each other as the new plant took shape.
The men strived “to get started and to get them profitable,” Dorley said, and in the process, they became friends.
While presenting Payne with a Korean ceramic vase, Kwon tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the Tallassee mayor to sing a song.
Workers in the plant use sophisticated machines to create steel tubes and piping for hydraulic fluids that operate a car’s breaking and power steering systems, as well as plastic tubing that carries fuel to the engine.
The grand opening also marked the first bloom of a Tallassee’s newest industrial park, just three miles from Interstate 85 on the city’s outskirts. Payne said he hopes to have another lot on the other side of Hanil Drive planted with the seed of industry in the near future.
