POSCO has been operating the group POSOCO Beyond Global Youth Volunteers since 2007 under a program of helping Korean youth nurture a sense of volunteering service and sharing talents. POSCO, which has so far graduated about 1,000 youth sharing talent, has become the first Korean company to form oversea students’ volunteering teams which are engaged in volunteering activities in foreign countries, including India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam plus Korea.
In particular, the 10th class of the group began to conduct volunteering activities under a project to build steel houses for Korean victims of fires and low-income families. The 11th class of the group presented their overseas volunteering activities lasting about eight months at an event on Feb. 28.
Some 100 members of the class participated in the event together with Lee Doo-hyun, head of POSCO’s Social Contribution Group and Lee Kwang-hoe, head of the Management and Planning Office at the Habitat for Humanity Korea.
The class was engaged in diverse volunteering activities in Korea and abroad, including steel house work in Korea, a service of sharing gift, and overseas volunteering activities for eight months after it was activated in a ceremony at the Gwangyang Steelworks last July 3.
In particular, the 11th class participated in a eight-night, nine-day stint of volunteering at a steel house construction site in five areas, including Incheon, Boseong, and Gwangyang, They carried construction materials and experienced the installation of the external material PosMAC, made with POSCO’s world premium steel products.
They were also engaged in a eight-night, nine-day stint of volunteering at a construction work site in Rayong, Thailand, and educating primary students at its neighborhood, and participating in a cultural exchange program celebrating the 6oth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Korea and Thailand.
POSCO and Samsung SDI Team up to Win Chilean Lithium Project
The POSCO-Samsung SDI consortium was notified on March 9 by the Chilean Production Development Corporation (CORFO) that it had won an international bid for a project to make cathodes with locally-available lithium. CORFO launched the bid in May with the aim of expanding lithium’s downstream industry and nurturing the Chilean industry. Twelve companies from seven countries, including Chile, the United States, Canada, China and Korea, participated in the bid, and the Korean consortium was selected after two screening processes.
With the POSCO-Samsung SDI consortium landing the bid, the two companies plan to invest 57.5 billion won to set up a cathode production joint venture with an annual capacity of producing 3,200 tons of large-volume cathodes for EV using lithium being secured with Chile’s lowest export price in Mejillones, northern Chile.
Samsung SDI, which will secure a stable supply of cathodes for a long period of time, is expected to strengthen the company’s competitive edge in the supply of the raw materials of secondary batteries. As demand for large-volume batteries for EVs, ESS and IT gadgets is surging in an era of eco-friendly growth, the cathode market, a core raw material of lithium ion batteries, is predicted to soar to 860,000 tons in 2020, a four-time jump from 210,000 tons in 2016.
Lithium emerges prominently as a raw material of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Chile has the biggest lithium deposit in the world, which stands at an estimated 7.5 billion tons, accounting for about 47 percent of the world’s total deposits.
Chile ranked 2nd in the world by producing about 14.1 million tons of lithium, a 33 percent share, followed by Australia.
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