POSCO Chairman Choi Jeong-woo speaks at a ceremony to launch the 2021 business year in a video hook-up with POSCO Center in Seoul, Pohang and Gwangyang steelworks on Jan. 4. (Photo: POSCO)

POSCO Chairman Choi Jeong-woo stressed innovation and growth as the most significant areas to help the company evolve into an exemplary global corporate citizen and centennial company.

POSCO held a ceremony to launch the 2021 business year in a video hook-up with POSCO Center in Seoul, Pohang and Gwangyang steelworks on Jan. 4.

The event was streamed live via the company’s in-house broadcasting system to office and at-home employees.

Chairman Choi extended his thanks to the executives and staff members of POSCO Group and its cooperative companies.

“Even though we‘ve experienced an unprecedented crisis, influenced by COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve managed to overcome the crisis nimbly and prepare for the future thanks to executives and staff members of POSCO Group and its cooperative companies, who have made sacrifices and spared no efforts,” Choi said. “This year will be a year in which a new crisis and opportunities co-exist,” he added.

Amidst mega-trends such as new mobility, urbanization, digitalization, decarbonization, and the accelerating of deglobalization, he said, the survival of the manufacturing industry will hinge on how well it goes beyond simple production.

“As social demand for corporate ESG (environment, social and governance) management is mounting, now is a time when it is more significant to translate our corporate citizenship management tenet into action,” he said.

Chairman Choi urged executives and staff members to make a disaster-free and happy worksite by implementing safety as their foremost core value - attaching top priority for his year.

By business, he called for strongly maintaining a competitive edge in the steel business and nurturing next-generation businesses by accelerating outcomes in the group’s projects.

Chairman Choi asked for laying profit-taking foundation with a focus on mobility, steel building material and eco-friendly energy steel products in the steel-making business.

He spoke of the expanding of synergetic effects among subsidiaries of the group in the LNG business, improving profitability in the food grain business through the expansion of the value chain, focusing on winning construction project orders in the green and digital sectors, and exploring opportunities related to new power generation projects focusing on eco-friendliness.

Chairman Choi said his group will focus on nurturing new, leading green & mobility businesses as next-generation growth engines to cope with rapidly changing future business environment changes and secure high growth and leadership.

POSCO Group will concentrate its capabilities to make a leap forward in the secondary battery materials and hydrogen sectors, he added.

Besides, he said, POSCO Group will present a new model of creating social values as an exemplary company of socially sustainable growth.

“A honorable company is a company which does not neglect issues of the times and society and designate solutions as core goals and values of its management,” Choi said.

“If company and society, human being and nature, and the present and the future achieves a harmonious development by expanding sympathy, co-existence, and co-prosperity, POSCO’s world will be expanded and maintained,” he said.

Chmn. Choi Says Safety is Foremost Core Value

Chairman Choi toured Pohang and Gwangyang steelworks as his first inspection of the new year to emphasize the importance of safety.

He also took stock of the group’s new growth engines, such as secondary battery materials and hydrogen.

Chairman Choi made an inspection tour of Gwangyang Steelworks in Jeollanam-do on Jan. 8.He urged the officers there to make a healthy and happy worksite by making safety a foremost core value.

On the same day, he visited the Gwangyang branch of POSCO trade union, an auto plate production plant and a lithium production plant and exchanged greetings with executives and staff members.