Posted on 15 Jun 2016
Korea’s biggest steelmaker POSCO has been named the world's most competitive steelmaker this year.
A global steel information service provider World Steel Dynamics (WSD) published this year's World-Class Steelmaker Rankings in New York on June 13 and selected POSCO as the world`s No.1 steelmaker.
Accordingly, POSCO has retained its title as the world’s most competitive steelmaker for the seventh consecutive year since 2010. In particular, the achievement is more meaningful in that the company had a tough time last year, experiencing a global downturn followed by declining steel demand and reinforcement of import restrictions of exporting countries and undergoing a strong restructuring process.
The WSD gave credit for POSCO's efforts to improve its corporate competitiveness by reorganizing corporate structure, such as investment attraction of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and sale of POSCO Special Steel, making use of innovative technologies, including FINEX and CEM, boosting technical skills and productivity of engineers, increasing sales of value-added high-end products and reducing costs. As a result, it awarded POSCO the highest score of 8.02 points out of 10.
POSCO is followed by Japanese Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp. (NSSMC) which has the improved export competitiveness due to a weak yen, U.S.-based steelmakers Nucor and SDI which have improved the competitiveness in energy costs through the use of shale gas, Russian steelmaker NLMK which has iron ore and coal mines and another Russian steelmaker Severstal. Hyundai Steel took the 12th place on the list.
