POSCO Opens Steel Processing Center near Nagoya

POSCO of South Korea started the operation of the new steel processing center, POS-NPC in Toyohashi, Aichi of Japan after the completion of the construction. The center is base to expand the sales of strategic items including automotive steel and stainless steel for Japanese market. The firm accelerates the marketing and contract sales for auto- and auto-parts makers including Toyota Motor. The center will unveil the plant to the customers at the opening ceremony on Friday. The plant has 14,300 square meters of floor space on 33,000 square meters of land. The plant has 2 large leveler lines including a line for non-oil materials, a small leveler line and 3 large slitter lines including a non-oil line. The lines can process flat steel with 0.4-6.0 millimeters of thick and up to 1,650 mm of width. The plant has annual 154,000 tonnes of processing capacity mainly for pickling steel, cold rolled steel, coated steel and stainless. The center will serve as the flat steel processor with the levelers and slitters. The firm considers introducing blanking processing and tailored welded blanking facilities in future in order to improve the processing function for automobile industry. POSCO just opened Thai steel processing center on January 20. The firm has offshore 12 centers including POS-NPC. The firm will open centers in India and Mexico in second half of the year totaling 14 centers in the year.