Its low-sugar and low-sodium brand Light&Joy has grown 50 percent in sales within a year of launch.
With UNO and a planned U.S. plant, Chairman Ham Young-joon is balancing domestic fundamentals with global expansion.
Ham Young-joon, Chairman of Ottogi.
[Insight Korea = Park Hyun-ju]
While Nongshim and Samyang Foods continue to grow in scale through overseas sales and aggressive global marketing, Ottogi is focusing on strengthening its fundamentals. The strategy is to reinforce the essence of its products first. It is a management approach that Ottogi Chairman Ham Young-joon has consistently maintained.
Ham joined Ottogi in 1984 and became chairman and chief executive in 2010. Under the corporate philosophy of contributing to the improvement of human dietary life through better quality, higher nutrition and more advanced food products, he has placed ethical management and research and development investment at the center of the company’s operations.
Rather than pursuing short-term scale expansion, Ham is known for seeking to raise long-term corporate value by deepening existing brands and steadily building new ones.
According to Ottogi on the 18th, the company is pursuing a strategy to upgrade its portfolio under this philosophy. It is expanding not only its traditional mid- to low-priced product strategy, but also high-value product categories such as home meal replacements, sauces, low-sugar products and low-sodium items.
Light&Joy Sales Jump 50 Percent Within a Year
A representative example is Light&Joy, a brand Ottogi recently launched to target health-conscious consumers.
According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety’s “2024 Food Industry Production Performance” report, production value of sugar-free products reached 572.6 billion won, up 20.1 percent from a year earlier. The number of related products also more than doubled, from 261 to 590.
As the healthy pleasure trend spreads rapidly across the food market, Ottogi launched Light&Joy in April last year and began targeting the market. Light&Joy is an integrated brand for reduced-ingredient products across various categories, including ketchup, mayonnaise, dressings, tuna, ramen and soups.
Ottogi has steadily introduced reduced-ingredient products since launching Half Mayo in 1997. But because the products were released individually, consumers often found it difficult to identify them at a glance. Light&Joy was a strategic choice to group them under one brand and improve consumer accessibility.
The results came quickly. In the first quarter of this year, sales rose about 50 percent from a year earlier. In the jam and dressing categories, growth exceeded 130 percent. The company has since expanded the lineup into home meal replacement products.
An Ottogi official said, “We plan to continue launching new products across various categories so more consumers can enjoy a healthy diet.”
UNO Targets One-Person Households and Tops 10 Billion Won in Annual Sales
UNO, a handy food brand targeting the rise in one-person households, is another card Ottogi is putting effort into.
Under the slogan “a new standard for meals eaten alone,” UNO began in 2019 with two round pizza products. It later added square pizzas and cup pizzas, and last year included three burrito products, building what the company calls a “one-serving handy food universe.”
The brand surpassed 10 billion won in annual sales in 2024 and has continued to grow since adding burritos. Its strategy of targeting consumers aged 15 to 35, who are familiar with convenience store purchases, has paid off.
An Ottogi official said, “UNO is preparing various brand promotions, including video content based on its brand universe, brand booths at university festivals and character collaborations, to expand contact points with consumers aged 15 to 35.”
“We will continue various activities to make UNO, a one-serving convenient meal brand, more widely known,” the official added.
Ottogi, which has long targeted the domestic market with value-for-money products, is also expanding into premium lines. Its premium home meal replacement brand, Oz Kitchen, is building its position in the premium HMR market with curries and Chinese-style rice bowls inspired by cuisines from around the world. Its healthy convenience meal brand, Gappeun Hankki, has also continued to expand its lineup with brown rice, chicken breast and related products.
The company’s approach of launching new brands while deepening existing ones shows how firmly Ham places the “essence of the product” at the center of management.
Global Sales Target of 1.1 Trillion Won by 2030
While maintaining its product-focused strategy, Ham is also putting Ottogi’s global business into motion.
Ottogi’s overseas sales account for about 11 percent of total revenue, far lower than Samyang Foods’ roughly 80 percent and Nongshim’s 40 percent. This is why the company has been viewed as having been unable to fully benefit from the global ramen boom because of its domestic market-centered business structure.
Recently, however, signs of overseas expansion have become more visible. Overseas sales in the first quarter rose 9.6 percent from a year earlier, and the overseas share of total sales increased from 10.9 percent to 11.5 percent.
Ham has set a goal of achieving 1.1 trillion won in global sales by 2030. To that end, Ottogi is pursuing the construction of its first North American plant in La Mirada, California, with operations targeted for 2027. The move is intended to help the company move beyond its existing Korean consumer-centered distribution network and expand into mainstream U.S. retail channels such as Walmart and Costco.
An Ottogi official said, “We plan to strengthen sales activities centered on global markets while continuing efficiency efforts to improve profitability.”
- This article was translated by ChatGPT. (이 기사는 챗GPT가 번역했습니다.)
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