No Progress
It has been found that POSCO’s negotiations with Eurasian Resources Group (ERG) in Kazakhstan for exporting its Finex technology are showing no progress at all for years.
According to industry sources, ERG currently prefers steel import to the construction of a Finex-based steel mill and no actual contract is likely to be signed in spite of the negotiations.
The Finex technology, developed by POSCO, can be defined as a method for producing molten metal by using cheap iron ore powder and cheap coal. It forms one of the company’s future growth drivers. It has tried to export the technology to Kazakhstan, India, China, Iran and so on since 2015.
Nonetheless, its efforts have borne no fruit so far. POSCO tried to build a Finex-based steel mill in Odisha, India, but the project is about to go up in smoke with local residents opposed to it. POSCO signed a memorandum of agreement with Iranian steelmaker PKP in February last year to build a similar steel mill in Iran, but the construction has yet to be initiated due to financing problems. Chongqing Iron & Steel, which was expected to employ the technology, recently went into court receivership.