[New Year's Message] Choi Jung-woo, POSCO Chairman, "This Year Will Focus on 'Innovation' and 'Growth'"

Emphasizing 'Safety' as Top Priority... Criticized Last Year for Safety Accident Recurrence
Expresses Will to Foster New Businesses While Securing Competitive Edge in Steel Industry
Calls for Organizational Culture Innovation

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] Choi Jung-woo, Chairman of POSCO, stated, "For POSCO, a global model citizen, to leap forward as a 100-year company, what is most important to us now is 'innovation' and 'growth'."

In his New Year's address on the 4th, Chairman Choi said, "A great company is one that does not ignore the problems faced by the era and society but makes solving them the core goal and value of corporate management."

◆ 'Safety' First Priority… Securing New Competitive Advantages in the Steel Business = Chairman Choi outlined four key areas?safety, business, civil society, and organizational culture?as the main focus for this year. He named 'safety' as the top core value.

He urged, "With the belief that I protect the safety of myself and my colleagues, we must actively identify and immediately improve outdated safety facilities and unsafe sites," adding, "Let us quickly equip smart safety devices such as portable CCTV and smart watches (Smart Watch)."

Secondly, he announced that this year the steel business will firmly maintain its competitive edge, accelerate performance creation in group businesses, and focus on nurturing next-generation businesses.

Chairman Choi said, "To maintain the leading position of the steel business in a low-growth, contraction society, securing new competitive advantages is urgent," adding, "Let us establish a multi-core (Multi Core) profit base centered on new mobility, construction materials, and eco-friendly energy steel, and lead the development of multi-materials (Multi-Material) combined with dissimilar materials to rapidly enhance product competitiveness."

To this end, he emphasized that the smart factory, which has been proactively promoted so far, should evolve into Smart Factory 2.0 by pursuing overall optimization that transcends unit process optimization to process integration and front-to-back process coverage, thereby dramatically improving cost competitiveness across the entire value chain including productivity, yield, quality, logistics, equipment, safety, and energy.

Regarding group businesses, he expressed the intention to expand synergies among group companies in LNG businesses such as E&P, trading, and terminals. The food business aims to improve profitability through value chain expansion and contribute to national food security. The construction business will focus on orders in the green and digital sectors, while the power business plans to seek new opportunities centered on eco-friendly projects.

◆ Fostering Secondary Battery Materials and Preparing for the Hydrogen Economy… Organizational Culture Innovation = In particular, Chairman Choi said, "In response to rapidly changing future business environments, we will focus on nurturing green mobility leading new businesses as next-generation growth businesses," adding, "The secondary battery materials business, which is being developed as a core group business, will strengthen the value chain from raw materials such as lithium, nickel, and graphite to cathode and anode materials, continuously expand production capacity, and leap to a global top-tier position."

He continued, "In preparation for the advent of the hydrogen economy, we will secure initiative in the hydrogen business and consolidate the group's capabilities at each stage of production, storage, transportation, and utilization to build a foundation to become a specialized hydrogen company in the future."

Chairman Choi also emphasized the need for organizational culture innovation that encourages creative thinking and bold challenges, stating that he will promote work innovation that fundamentally solves problems that have been conventionally overlooked by utilizing the 'Design Thinking' methodology, which involves thinking from the ground up.

Chairman Choi promised, "We will actively nurture New Collar talents who possess the innovation mindset of 'Challenge, Change, Chance'?not fearing challenges, leading change, and discovering new growth opportunities."

He added, "We must activate collaboration between organizations, efficiently apply various work styles to protect the health and well-being of members, and maintain and develop stable labor-management relations."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.