According to EDAILY on February 20, poSCO's cash assets reached 11.648 trillion won last year, up 218 billion won from 2020, according to the steel industry on Monday. Hyundai Steel's cash assets amounted to 2.2115 trillion won, up 134.4 billion won from 2020. Seasia Steel holdings also increased its cash assets by 79.3 billion won year-on-year in the third quarter of last year.

The Korean steel industry is planning to expand its overseas production capacity based on such cash assets. Posco plans to invest 12 trillion won overseas by 2030 to increase its crude steel production capacity from 5.1 million tons to 23.1 million tons and build a crude steel production system of 60 million tons including domestic consumption. Last month, POSCO signed a memorandum of understanding with Adani Group, India's largest energy and logistics company, to build an environmentally friendly integrated steel plant in India, including the production of steel, steel and steel rolling process. This is the second integrated steel plant overseas after the cooperation with Indonesia Steel. In addition to India, POSCO started construction of a 900,000-ton auto steel plate plant in Tangshan, Hebei Province, China, early this year in cooperation with China Hegang Group.

At the same time, in order to cope with the global trend of environmental protection brought by electric vehicles, offshore wind market demand, there are also new, additional overseas equipment steel companies. With the rapid conversion of electric vehicles in Europe, Hyundai Steel is expanding its hot stamping production line in the Czech Republic and plans to invest 21 billion won by next year to increase the annual production capacity of hot stamping sheets in the Czech Republic from 3.4 million to 4.8 million sheets. Seasia Steel holdings is building an offshore wind infrastructure production plant in the UK with an annual capacity of 240,000 tons, which will be the largest single offshore wind infrastructure plant in the world, targeting the European offshore wind market.

The expansion of overseas investment by Korean steel companies can be seen as a way to strengthen the competitiveness of existing steel businesses and secure future growth engines by expanding overseas markets, and it is not easy to build new plants in Korea due to The country's carbon neutrality policy, a steel industry official said.