POSCO has reconfirmed its target to be “POSCO the Great” in a ceremony to kick off the New Year, the year of the blue goat according to the lunar calendar. Some 300 officers and staff attended the office of the steel maker in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, on Jan. 2. Officers and staff in Seoul and the Gwangyang Steel Complex, in Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province, watched the event on closed-circut TV.
Chairman Kwon Oh-joon, in his New Year address, said the year 2015 is the year in which they have to improve profitability and boost competitiveness, which he summed up as so: “All of us have to do our best to improve the steel maker’s financial results.”
He said he would like to thank those who worked hard to achieve last year’s target. He also said no one should forget that this is the second year for the company’s Three-Year mid-term plan, where they should boost financial results by strengthening efforts to achieve the financial target to make a full step toward fulfilling all of the objectives under the Three-Year Plan.
Kwon pointed out the five moves to achieving the medium-term target, including strengthening a foundation for profit and income structure, reform of the operational structure, keeping a sound balance sheet, speeding up the reform of operational structure, settlement of ways to work on core projects and expansion, core new projects and building their commercial bases, boosting the effect of the group’s management and the ways to create synergy among affiliates, and going all out to work on those goals.
The chairman also said POSCO must demonstrate progressive solution marketing by focusing on the development of World Premium products. He said they must expand the infrastructure of their global solutions to promote effective commercial support by Technical Service Center and other members of the solution network.
“In the case of our family companies that engage predominantly in contract-based businesses, we have to mobilize our group’s capabilities and reinforce our solutions business in order to secure first-mover advantage by proposing and developing customized client-center projects,” he said.
Kwon said this year should be defined by the collaboration they achieve between family companies specializing in their respective industries for greater operating efficiency, value creation and synergy formation.
“We will also continue to expand the coordination and cooperation of overseas businesses by operating several regional headquarters,” Kwon said.
The chairman said he would like to insist that all of the employees maintain their alignment to the group’s strategic direction mentioned above in order that they accomplish the group’s management objectives.
The chairman said he cannot stress enough that now is the time to propel POSCO’S operations full tilt.
“Today, ‘MV POSCO’ is no longer fit for purpose: the way of the lone battleship is no more,” he said. “The role of our subsidiaries and overseas enterprise has become critical, as sales form these two groups account for over half of POSCO Group’s total revenue.”
Three remote vessels of POSCO must be assembled as an impregnable armada in order to realize our group wide vision, Kwon said.
He urged his employees to give their full commitment to fulfilling this daunting task and exhibiting superior competitiveness to reinvigorate POSCO’s core competencies.
“That is how we will achieve our mid-term goals and establish the foundation for the firm’s long-term prosperity,” the chairman said.
