Dongkuk Steel Vice Chairman Jang Sae-wook.

Dongkuk Steel is at a forefront of introducing eco-friendly engineering tactics to cope with strengthening of environmental regulations.

A representative example of the strategies of Dongkuk Steel is employing is color steel products. Dongkuk Steel has introduced premium color steel brands like “Luxteel” and “Appsteel.”

Dongkuk Steel’s color steel brand “Luxteel”

Dongkuk Steel’s color steel brand “Appsteel.” (Photos: Dongkuk Steel)

Dongkuk Steel became the industry’s first company to introduce the color steel brand Luxteel in 2011. At that time, the brand was praised for breaking the conventional mold.

The introduction of the color brand has served as an opportunity for Dongkuk Steel to shift from the conventional steel sales method as a B2B company into a customer-oriented paradigm to offer architect designers the right to choose steel materials.

In 2013, the steelmaker released “Appsteel,” the color steel brand for electric home appliances.

Of late, the digital inkjet print technology has become the subject of keen attention from the business community. The technology is about an ability to print pictures on steel plates, like the developing of a film.

It adopts a method in which color steel products are produced by spraying four to seven color inks on steel plates. Dongkuk Steel’s inkjet print steel plate technology has been praised for passing conventional limits, such as anti-tarnishing and corrosion-proof properties.

Among Dongkuk Steel’s mainstay products are “Luxteel Bio,” a product containing properties such antibiotics, anti-mold, deodorization, and anti-graffiti on top of color.

The premium steel product is expected to be in wider use in areas such as elevator fire doors, the interior of ordinary structures, pharmaceutical companies, semiconductor plants and food factories.
In Korea, Dongkuk Steel is getting ahead of its rivals with its own solution marketing activities.

The steelmaker has formed a collaboration regime designed to proactively meet customers’ needs by operating color steel plate research and design teams.

Dongkuk Steel is proactively trying to cope with environment restrictions, which are getting more stringent. Dongkuk Steel became the first Korean steelmaker to enter the electric furnace business. Scrap iron can be recycled on more than 40 occasions.

The electric furnace is more eco-friendly so it spews out less carbon emissions and consumes less energy, compared to the blast furnace designed to extract iron ore into crude steel. Dongkuk Steel has been building up eco-friendly plant processes since 2010.

Incheon Steelworks has replaced old electric furnace and steel rolling lines with eco-friendly facilities spewing out less greenhouse gas emissions. Eco-friendly factors are considered from a facility investment planning stage to transform the whole of the hardware.

The ecological and economical arc (ECO Arc) furnace is the industry’s representative eco-friendly steel-making facility since scrap iron, being melted, can be put into a furnace.

It is known to have an effect of reducing energy consumption by about 30 percent.

Dongkuk Steel is the first Korean steelmaker to introduce the ECO Arc furnace.

The ECO Arc furnace is certified as one of state-designated greenhouse gas emission reduction methods and the introduction of the furnace method is the result of the steelmaker’s strategy of factoring in eco-friendliness at the whole of the steel-making plant, a Dongkuk Steel official said.