"POSCO will try to help India become a global hub of the automobile and automotive parts industry." POSCO chairman Kwon Oh-joon said this on January 22 in a completion ceremony for POSCO's cold-rolled steel plant within the Vile Bhagad industrial zone in India's Maharashtra State. The ceremony was attended by the Indian Minister of Steel Narendra Singh Tomar, Maharashtra Industries Minister Subhash Desai, and Maharashtra Labor Minister Prakash Mehta, as well as executives of major auto makers such as Volkwagen, Nissan, Tata, and Toyota.
The cold-rolled steel works that POSCO has completed at the cost of US$709 million has begun commercial operations since June last year after breaking ground in November 2011. The steel mill with an annual capacity of 1.8 million tons is supplying high-grade auto steel sheets to major car makers such as GM, Volkwagen, Tata, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Bajaj Auto.
Earlier last month, the Korean steel maker had announced that it would build a 110,000-ton steel mill in the Indian state of Gujarat at the cost of 22 billion won. POSCO has made a variety of efforts to enter the rapidly growing Indian market. In May 2012, it built a plant in Maharashtra to produce 450,000 tons of hot-dip galvanized steel sheets a year. It is supplying steel products to local auto makers and home appliance manufacturers through three steel processing centers in Delhi, Pune, and Chennai.
Source: The Korea Economic Daily