POSCO Commences Operation of 120,000-Ton Steel Processing Centers in Thailand And India
South Korea’s largest steel manufacturer, Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) (Pohang, South Korea) recently commenced operations at its steel processing centers in India and Thailand. Each facility has a production capacity of 120,000 tons per year of steel products. According to a report by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, TX), these processing centers, which will mainly produce steel coils, will cater to the needs of electronic and auto companies in the regions.
The move comes close on the heels of POSCO’s signing supply contracts with Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota City, Japan) and Sony Corporation (Tokyo, Japan). The two centers will also be utilized as warehouses and distribution hubs. These facilities have been set up to meet the growing demand for steel products in Southeast Asia and will deliver products based on specific customer requirements.
POSCO’s processing center in India is located in Pune, Maharashtra, which has many international and domestic automobile manufacturing facilities. The Thai plant is based in the Wellgrow industrial estate in Bangkok. Construction of the Pune and Wellgrow facilities was completed on April 21 and April 23, 2009, respectively.
The processing center in Pune is the second such facility in India. The first plant, commissioned in 2006, manufactures electric steel sheets. POSCO-India Pune Processing Center will cater to customers in the electronics and heavy engineering industries, while POSCO-Thailand Bangkok Processing Center will service LG Electronics (Seoul, South Korea) and Samsung Electronics (Seoul) in Thailand and automobile companies such as Toyota Motor, Honda Motor Company (Tokyo), and Nissan Motor Company Limited (Tokyo, Japan). With the commissioning of these two centers, POSCO now owns 36 steel processing centers in 12 countries.
Earlier this month, POSCO signed a deal with Sony Corporation to supply galvanized steel sheets to Sony’s production facilities in Asia for the manufacture of liquid crystal display (LCD) televisions. Since January this year, POSCO has also been delivering galvanized steel sheets and other products to Toyota’s manufacturing facility in Japan.
POSCO, which is the world’s fourth largest steel maker, owns the Pohang and Gwangyang steel manufacturing facilities, which have a combined production capacity of 31 million tons per year. The company has, in recent years, turned attention to developing facilities in India.
POSCO India (Bhubaneswar, Orissa) is presently setting up an integrated 12 million-ton-per-year steel plant in Jagatsinghpur, Orissa, about 10 kilometers from the Paradip port. The project, which has an estimated investment value of $12 billion, will be completed in three stages with capacities of 4 million tons per year each. The first phase will consist of the commissioning of a 1.5 million-ton-per-year steel-slab manufacturing unit and a 2.5 million-ton-per-year hot rolled coils unit. The first phase is expected to be completed by 2011-12. The construction schedule of the second and third phases will be finalized after the first phase is commissioned.
The integrated steel plant in Jagatsinghpur will utilize innovative and environmentally friendlier technologies such as the Mini Flat Mill process and FINEX. The Mini Flat Mill process significantly reduces the production cycle of crude steel to hot metal rolled strip, resulting in savings of expenditure, energy and operating costs. The FINEX process, developed by POSCO and Siemens VAI Metals Technologies (Linz, Austria), allows the production of molten iron directly without recourse to the sintering and coking process used in traditional methods. This technology helps save costs and energy for the company and also reduces the emission of greenhouse gases compared to the traditional blast furnace manufacturing process.
POSCO India also signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Orissa for a mining lease for 600 million tons of reserves to cater to its steel plant at Jagatsinghpur for 30 years of operations. POSCO India requires 20 million tons per year for the next 30 years to produce 12 million tons per year of steel. Water supply for the project will be routed from the Jobra barrage of the Mahanadi River. The plant requires about 3.5 cubic meters per second of water to produce 12 million tons per year of steel. The company will also build a 1,300-megawatt captive power plant as part of the project. POSCO has also applied for two mining licenses in Sundergarh and Keonjhar and three prospecting licenses. The exact location of the mines will be decided upon after the firm secures the mining leases. Globally, POSCO has equity stakes in several iron ore and coalmines in Canada, Brazil and Australia.
About the Author: "J. J." Johnson John
