Posco making inroads in steel processing space in India

MUMBAI: True to its tagline "we move the world in silence" and notwithstanding delay in the proposed steel project in Orissa, South Korea's Posco is silently but diligently making inroads in India by increasing the number and capacity of steel processing centres.

In a joint venture with its domestic consumer electronics peer LG Electronics, Posco had in 2006 set up a subsidiary at Talegaon in Pune, Posco-India Pune Processing Centre (Posco-IPPC) for processing the alloy.

Posco-IPPC, in which Posco owns the majority stake, mainly brings raw materials from different Posco works and processes them as per the customers' requirements.

The Talegaon facility, built with an investment of USD 20 million, has an annual steel processing capacity of 170,000 tonnes.

Posco-IPPC is now setting up one more processing centre at Talegaon, adjoining the existing facility, with an investment of USD 20 million.

The plant will have an annual capacity of 120,000 tonnes and be operational by the end of this year. Putting up a third plant is also in its agenda which may come up in Chennai.

"We are thinking of putting up the third plant. It has not yet been decided. It may come next year. We are trying to find out the land," Posco-IPPC Managing Director Gil Ho Bang said.

Posco-IPPC also does processing jobs for domestic steel makers. However, some sophisticated variants of the alloy like Silicon steel is directly imported to sell in the Indian market.