South Korean steelmaker POSCO has said that its subsidiary POSCO-Vietnam's cold rolling mill has achieved the targeted level of production earlier than expected.
The plant's continuous annealing line (CAL) and pickling line tandem cold mill (PCM) reached planned production rates after only five and 5.7 months after the launch of the facility, respectively, beating company forecasts.
The achievement has helped POSCO-Vietnam establish a stable supply basis to provide the Southeast Asian market with cold rolled products, as well as consolidate the position of the plant as the best cold rolling mill in the region.
The cold rolling mill produced 80,000 mt of cold rolled steel products in March alone, with an operation rate of 80 percent - 20 percentage points higher than projected. Since the beginning of this April, the plant has been in full operation, with targeted production of 100,000 mt for the month. Most of the 1.2 million mt of steel to be produced in 2010 - 700,000 mt of cold rolled steel for vehicles and motorcycles, plus 500,000 mt of high quality full hard steel for construction - will be sold in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian markets.
POSCO-Vietnam also plans to build a 3 million mt hot strip mill and a 400,000 mt CGL plant to cover the rising demand in the country.