President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol Visits POSCO Gwangyang Steelworks

President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol Encourages On-site Workers at Gwangyang No.1 Blast Furnace, the World's Largest Scale

Chairman Choi Jung-woo: "Expanding Business in Secondary Battery Materials, Lithium, Nickel, and Hydrogen Sectors"

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Heo Seonsik] President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol visited POSCO Gwangyang Steelworks, the world's largest steel plant.

On the 21st (Thursday), President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol visited POSCO Gwangyang Steelworks and had tea time with Kim Young-rok, Governor of Jeollanam-do, Choi Jeong-woo, Chairman of POSCO Group, Kim Hak-dong, Vice Chairman of POSCO, and others. He also visited Gwangyang No. 1 Blast Furnace to encourage the employees.

Choi Jeong-woo, Chairman of POSCO Group, stated, “POSCO has been selected as the ‘World’s Most Competitive Steelmaker’ for 12 consecutive years, and in 2019, it was recognized as the first domestic ‘Lighthouse Factory’ leading the future of global manufacturing by the World Economic Forum (WEF), establishing itself as a world-class steel company.”

He added, “This year, we transitioned to a holding company system to expand future business discovery and achieve balanced growth at the group level. Going forward, POSCO Group will expand its business areas beyond steel, the ‘rice of industry,’ to include secondary battery materials, lithium, nickel, and hydrogen, transforming into a leading eco-friendly future materials company, and ultimately contribute to the economic re-advancement of the Republic of Korea.”

Gwangyang Steelworks is the largest single steel plant in the world and aims to be the global No. 1 automotive steel specialist based on world-class automotive steel sheet technology.

Last year, Gwangyang Steelworks produced approximately 8.2 million tons of automotive steel sheets. Considering the global annual automobile sales volume is about 80 million units, this means POSCO’s automotive steel sheets were used in one out of every ten cars worldwide.

In particular, the ‘No. 1 Blast Furnace’ at Gwangyang Steelworks, which President-elect Yoon visited, has cumulatively produced 120 million tons of molten iron since its first molten iron production in April 1987, and was reborn as the world’s largest blast furnace (6,000㎥) through equipment refurbishment in 2013.

Additionally, Gwangyang No. 1 Blast Furnace operates as a ‘Smart Blast Furnace,’ producing molten iron based on artificial intelligence algorithms utilizing big data.

Meanwhile, there are currently 15 ultra-large blast furnaces worldwide with a capacity of over 5,500㎥. POSCO owns six of these ultra-large blast furnaces, including Gwangyang No. 1 Blast Furnace (6,000㎥), out of a total of eight blast furnaces at Pohang and Gwangyang Steelworks.

Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Heo Seonsik hss79@asiae.co.kr

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