South Korean steelmaker POSCO has stated that capacity utilization at the cold rolling mill of its Vietnamese subsidiary POSCO-Vietnam has been reduced to 70 percent from 100 percent at the beginning of this year. Due to the sluggishness in the overall steel market, the capacity utilization rate at the cold rolling mill had already been reduced to 80 percent in August this year, declining further to 70 percent in December.
The production capacity of the cold rolling mill in question is 1.2 million mt, including 700,000 mt for cold rolled products and 500,000 mt for cold rolled full hard coil. Insiders at the cold rolling mill stated that in particular softening demand in the Southeast Asian market has resulted in reduced capacity utilization at the mill.