November 22, 2024

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Posco Group Chairman Chang In-hwa speaks during a meeting held in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, Monday. (Posco)

Posco Group Chairman Chang In-hwa announced that the group plans to integrate advanced materials into its core operations, alongside steelmaking and secondary battery materials, aiming to double sales to 5 trillion won ($3.6 billion) by 2030.

"Let’s restore our core competitiveness and trust across our business, management and organizational culture, boldly innovate beyond our limits, and strive toward the future," Chang said during a meeting in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, on Monday.

"By 2030, Posco aims to double combined sales and quadruple operating profits, with a market capitalization of 200 trillion won, becoming a world-class leader in advanced materials," he added.

As part of this initiative, Chang explained that the group will develop the advanced materials sector into another key growth pillar, targeting sales of over 5 trillion won by 2030. This will be primarily driven by mergers and acquisitions to dominate the industry across various fields, including eco-friendly energy, new mobility and materials for future industries like aerospace.

Monday’s meeting, the group's first with over 100 attendees since Chang’s tenure as chairman began 100 days ago, also provided updates on the group's interim results and future plans for the "seven innovation tasks" announced in April.

Among these tasks are: strengthening the competitiveness of steel and secondary battery materials, diversifying the group's businesses, installing fair and transparent governance, raising employees' ethical awareness, strengthening compliance management and establishing a horizontal organizational culture.

In steel, the group’s traditional core business, Posco has achieved cost reductions and revenue generation of 230 billion won through improvements in manufacturing costs along with sales and procurement competitiveness. These efforts have included: expanding raw material cost-reduction technologies, increasing by-product gas utilization to improve power generation efficiency, enhancing pricing strategies and establishing a sales system focused on profitability.

For the secondary battery materials sector, the group has devised improvement plans for the entire value chain, from enhancing productivity to diversifying raw material based on changing internal and external business conditions.

Looking ahead, Posco will invest further in high-quality resources by collaborating with salt lakes in Chile and Argentina, as well as mines and resource companies in North America and Australia, to solidify its market position in the secondary battery materials market, Chang added.

Regarding governance and corporate culture innovation, Chang also pledged to enhance the transparency of the group's governance structure through the Governance Innovation Task Force established upon his inauguration. This task force plans to improve the selection and evaluation process for outside directors, strengthening the board's independence, as well as develop a systematic program for nurturing CEO candidates.

By Hwang Joo-young (flylikekite@heraldcorp.com)