POSCO Group Chairman Chang In-hwa said the group will switch to a stringent emergency management regime this year and restore market trust with overwhelming results that exceed its management targets. POSCO Group has been overhauling its business structure, including winding down low-margin operations, since it decided to enter an emergency management regime in 2022.
According to POSCO Group on the 30th, Chang held the first group management meeting of the year on the 29th at the POSCO Group headquarters in Gangnam, Seoul, and said, "To break through growth stagnation, we must boldly transform the group to focus on profitability."
The meeting focused on the group's management plan and key pending issues, strategies to strengthen fundamental competitiveness by business and to prove management performance with numbers, and measures to achieve a rebound in results.
First, for the steel business, the discussion covered strengthening the profit structure through structural cost innovation and expanded sales of high value-added products; accelerating decarbonization with the groundbreaking of a hydrogen-reduction steelmaking demo plant and the completion of an electric arc furnace in Gwangyang; and pursuing a self-contained localization strategy for overseas steel operations.
For growth businesses such as secondary battery materials and infrastructure, the agenda included generating revenue by leveraging a favorable market environment of a strong won-dollar rate and firm lithium prices, ramping up commercial production of lithium at POSCO Argentina, and completing the acquisition of equity in the lithium mine of Australia's Mineral Resources.
Chang presented "overwhelming execution" and "performance delivery" as the group's management keywords for the year and stressed that investments must yield visible results proven in numbers. He also emphasized the importance of the energy business institutional sector and safety management innovation.
He asked that the energy business be established as the group's next core business following steel and secondary battery materials, and to that end, to continue investing to expand liquefied natural gas (LNG) production capacity and strengthen trading capabilities.
He also said safety management innovation and accelerating the transition to artificial intelligence (AI) are core tasks that will change the group's constitution, and that the group should secure a commanding technological edge by introducing AI on manufacturing sites and maximize companywide efficiency by fully spreading AI across the office institutional sector.
Wrapping up the meeting, Chang said, "POSCO's strength is finding a clue to opportunity and taking a leap even in a crisis," and added, "With meticulous planning and overwhelming execution, let's make this a year that makes tangible the fruits of our investments in future growth and clearly proves the group's fundamental competitiveness with 'numbers.'"