Hebei Province-based major Chinese steelmaker HBIS Group has stated that it will cooperate with South Korea's largest steel company POSCO in setting up a joint venture in China to develop, produce and sell high-end steel products for the automobile industry, aiming to catch opportunities in the country's automobile market.
The location of the joint venture is still under discussion, though it will most likely be in Tangshan, in China’s Hebei Province, where HBIS’s Laoting cold rolling steel project is located.
The two sides have signed a memorandum of understanding for the project in question. The detailed investment scale of the venture has not been disclosed yet because related matters are still under discussion, HBIS indicated.
The two steel giants established a comprehensive cooperation partnership in August 2017, to set up a regular communication mechanism and achieve cooperation in the areas of strategic planning, raw materials, technologies, energy conservation and environmental protection.
The two parties conducted multi-level technical and commercial discussions on the auto steel project in the first half of 2019 and reached agreement on the intention to cooperate in terms of capital investment.