LS Mtron contrasts old and new machinery at vintage tractor exhibition

Gumsung Tractor 300 [Courtesy of LS Mtron]

South Korea’s LS Mtron is showcasing its brand’s history via an exhibition of its vintage agricultural machinery at its promotional facility located in Wanju, Jeonbuk Province. The exhibited item manufactured by Gold Star Cable, LS Mtron’s predecessor, in the 1980s was recently acquired from a customer who was using the product until it was sold. It also sets the ‘faultless’ Gold Star products heritage as a model to emulate and signifies the company’s commitment to continuous growth.

According to industry sources on Monday, LS Mtron recently opened the ‘Heritage Exhibition Hall’ in its Jeonju factory in Wanju County. The country’s first domestically produced model, the Gumsung Tractor 300, was the result of a technical collaboration with Italy’s Fiat in 1983, and the first domestically developed model, the GT4201, was released in 1991. The company’s vintage tractors were collected over a period of about a year via a public contest that was launched in 2021.

A specialized manufacturer of industrial machinery and advanced components, LS Mtron entered the agricultural machinery market in 1977 by importing and selling tractors. Changing its name to LG Cable in 1995, the company transitioned into an exporter of agricultural machinery by supplying tractors to Japan in the same year. It was spun off from LG Group in 2003 and renamed LS Mtron in 2008, going on to hit 484.4 billion won ($368 million) in overseas sales in the United States, Brazil, and China in 2022, up by 36 percent compared to the previous year.

To provide a comprehensive view of the agricultural machinery’s evolution at the exhibition, LS Mtron is also exhibiting its latest autonomous working tractor, the MT7 SmarTrek that was launched in 2022, alongside the vintage models.