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SEOUL, Oct. 28, 2025 — Seventeen Korean auto parts makers are pushing into the Czech Republic's electric-vehicle supply chain as the European car industry rewires its procurement networks for the EV era. KOTRA, the Korean state trade agency, hosted a business-matching event in Prague on October 23 at which the group sat down with purchasing executives from Skoda Auto, the Volkswagen Group's Czech brand, and roughly ten European Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. KOTRA reported the results on October 25, billing the meetings as a concrete step toward supply-chain entry into the EU's third-largest auto-producing nation.
The country produces roughly 1.4 million passenger cars a year, behind only Germany and Spain in the EU, and its automotive sector contributes close to a tenth of national GDP. In production terms, the Czech Republic anchors the middle of Europe's car-manufacturing map: Skoda's Mladá Boleslav complex is one of the largest and most automated assembly networks in central Europe, and Hyundai Motor's Nošovice plant operates as a second major OEM anchor a short drive away.
For European supply-chain managers, the Czech Republic is no longer a low-cost outpost. It sits at the center of a central European manufacturing corridor stretching through Slovakia into Hungary, where factory wages remain below the German heartland but engineering depth stays close to western levels—and where much of the EU's new EV component capacity is being built.
A supplier that lands a Czech contract is therefore positioned to serve two independent automaker networks at once, and the qualifications it earns—factory audits, quality certifications, delivery history—stay valid across the European industry. KOTRA deliberately selected companies that could bring something concrete to the table: several of the 17 already run Czech production bases, a fact procurement teams treat differently than they treat pure importers.
Korean suppliers have also concluded that shipping components from Asia no longer satisfies European customers demanding short lead times and measurable carbon footprints. Local production in Czech industrial zones shortens delivery schedules to Skoda's assembly lines and reduces the carbon cost of components, a line item European automakers now weigh heavily in sourcing decisions.
The delegation also arrived with unusual political momentum. In July 2025, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power signed the final contract to build two nuclear units at CEZ's Dukovany site, the largest single infrastructure export in South Korean history. Czech officials have framed the nuclear project as the anchor of a deeper industrial partnership, and KOTRA's mobility mission was among the first automotive-sector initiatives to follow the agreement.
The core of the Prague event was a series of one-on-one consultations built around a detailed request list. Skoda's purchasing department submitted 16 component categories in six areas ahead of the meetings:
The list aligned with what the Korean group already builds: automotive lighting and glass, window regulators, flush door handles, HVAC and thermal-management packages, battery cases and covers, and molds and inspection equipment. Two categories on the list—battery enclosures and thermal management—are the ones climbing fastest in value as Skoda expands its electric lineup. The brand, which books annual revenue of about €30.1 billion (roughly KRW 45 trillion), began series production of its compact Elroq crossover this year and has more electric models in the pipeline, each creating supplier slots that did not exist five years ago. Skoda has publicly said battery-electric models should make up the majority of its European sales by the end of the decade, which pushes its purchasing volumes for EV parts sharply higher.
One participant, identified as Korean Company A, said the sessions went further than standard trade-show introductions. Its managers met directly with Skoda's purchasing personnel, presented the company's existing Czech manufacturing base and its earlier record supplying automakers in Western Europe, then moved through product applicability, supply terms and the formal supplier-registration process. The representative said the goal is to enlarge the company's European customer portfolio and reduce dependence on any single buyer.
About ten Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers from the Czech Republic and neighboring European countries took part, including Hutchinson, a global parts group with annual revenue around €5 billion. Hutchinson's Rokycany plant, which supplies noise-, vibration- and fluid-management components to European automakers, used the session to find companies that can precision-machine steel and aluminum tubes into custom shapes and handle smaller order volumes than the industry norm.
That presence created a second entry path for the Korean delegation. A direct purchase contract with Skoda is the headline goal, but becoming a qualified sub-supplier to Hutchinson or another large parts group can produce revenue sooner, since first-tier firms are constantly screening backup sources that can absorb volume swings. KOTRA structured the day so that each Korean company left with contacts at both levels—the automaker and the parts industry.
The consultations were preceded by the Czech Future Mobility Forum, where automakers and industry representatives from both countries discussed the pace of the EV transition, recycling of battery materials, metals and plastics, and how changing production footprints are shifting technology needs.
The recycling discussion has a hard regulatory edge. The EU's Critical Raw Materials Act and the battery regulation framework are pushing automakers toward suppliers with documented recycling capacity and local material loops. The EU battery regulation, in force since August 2023, introduces carbon-footprint declarations now and recycled-content quotas for industrial and EV batteries by 2031. Those rules, phased in from the late 2020s, will reshape which suppliers can win pan-European contracts; Korean firms with Czech production footprints are in a stronger position to clear the compliance hurdles than exporters shipping from the other side of the world.
Kim Yeon-jae, head of KOTRA's Europe Regional Headquarters, described the electrification of Europe's auto industry and its supply-chain restructuring as a genuine opening for Korean parts companies. Kim said KOTRA would provide follow-up support so the Prague consultations mature into partnerships—not only with Skoda of the Volkswagen Group but with the wider European automotive industry.
The design of the event reflected a deliberate strategic choice: a narrow delegation, a requirements list assembled in advance, and fixed one-on-one slots instead of exhibition booths. KOTRA has said it will track each company's progress toward technical audits, sample orders and series contracts, and it is evaluating additional matching missions to other European automotive hubs based on the outcome of this first round.
The effort runs parallel to the same Korean suppliers' repositioning in North America, where U.S. EV tax incentives have pulled battery and component plants closer to assembly lines. Whether the Prague meetings bear fruit will become visible over the next two or three quarters, when KOTRA's tracking shows which companies move from initial talks to sample deliveries. For Korean suppliers, the larger test is whether they can convert a well-organized introduction into the kind of long-term European relationships that took Japanese competitors decades to build.
