From left to right: Jae-chun Song, chairman of Gwangyang City Council, Hyun-bok Jeong, mayor of Gwangyang, Gi-jong Woo, deputy governor of South Jeolla Province, POSCO CEO Ohjoon Kwon, Ung-beom Lee, president of LG Chem and Nam-seong Cho, president of Samsung SDI who can be seen pressing symbolic buzzers to show that the plant is now online.

“Our vision is what propelled us to keep going in spite of many difficulties and limitations,” POSCO CEO Ohjoon Kwon said. “We plan to continue differentiating ourselves in the energy material business with lithium, high purity nickel, and positive electrode materials.”

Jong-joo Kim, a director at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said, “Today’s completion of the plant gives POSCO the ability to provide lithium carbonate for its partners in the battery manufacturing industry. ”

POSCO is currently obtaining its lithium phosphate, a raw material of lithium carbonate, by extracting it from wasted rechargeable batteries. In the future, POSCO will use its proprietary lithium extraction technology to produce its own lithium phosphate. POSCO has been developing this eco-friendly technology for 7 years. It extracts lithium phosphate from saline water and converts it into lithium carbonate. Unlike the conventional method that takes 12 to 18 months on average, POSCO’s highly efficient method takes as little as 8 hours or up to one month. This method offers a purity rate of 99.9% while also increasing the lithium recovery rate to over 80%.

POSCO CEO Ohjoon Kwon and others being briefed on the lithium production process while taking a tour of the PosLX Plant.

Due to the continuous expansion of the mobile industry, the demand for lithium-ion secondary batteries has increased exponentially. In 2015, worldwide demand for lithium carbonate for batteries swelled from 6,000 tons (in 2002) to 66,000 tons. And as the presence of electric vehicles and energy storage systems (ESS) continues to expand, the demand for lithium carbonate is expected to balloon over 180,000 tons by 2025. To address these changing needs, POSCO plans to strengthen its position as a global lithium production base by building plants that have an annual production capacities of 40,000 tons of lithium – both at home and abroad – starting with the PosLX Plant at Gwangyang Works.

Don’t miss any of the exciting stories from The Steel Wire – subscribe via email today. 

GM plans to launch its plug-in hybrid car (PHEV) “Bolt” during the second half of this year. PHEV is a hybrid car that runs on an electric motor, which can be recharged by plugging it into an electrical power source. It switches to run on the combustion engine when the batteries are depleted.

POSCO ICT plans to build EV-charging stations at 120 key locations as the business partner of GM Korea and will also implement a related membership program.

As POSCO ICT has been selected as the producer of EV chargers for GM Korea, it plans to provide charging services with public charging stations at 120 key locations. Locations will include after-sales centers, GM sales stores, and big marts.

On top of public stations, it is building home charging stations for drivers of GM’s EV and is also implementing a membership program. Through this program, drivers can use the existing charging stations available at big marts, cinemas, and department stores across the country in addition to newly built stations.

 Expansion of the facility to 300 stations to become largest privately-owned infra

Apart from the 120 stations to be built under the deal with GM, POSCO ICT will increase the number of its own stations from 250 to 300 by the end of the year, making it the owner of the largest privately-owned EV charging infra.

It will build and run the infra by targeting the facilities that drivers visit often and spend time at. Drivers will be able to charge their car by driving only 4 to 5 km each time.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy recently announced that it would build high-speed charging stations, one within each 2-km radius, at key locations such as petrol stations, large supermarkets and parking lots in Seoul and Jeju by the end of this year. A total of 490 charging stations will be established. Since the Ministry will also build a total of 30,000 slow chargers at 4,000 apartment complexes across the country, the spread of electric vehicles in Korea is likely to be accelerated.

The interest in the electric vehicle is increasing due to climate environmental issues and the strive towards energy reduction. POSCO ICT will further expand its cooperation with electric car manufacturers in order to grow the charging infrastructure, no longer hindering the spread of electric vehicles within the country.

Be sure you never miss any of the exciting steel stories from The Steel Wire by subscribing to our blog.

The use of lithium is soaring. It’s gone from 70,000 tons in 2002 to 170,000 tons in 2014, and some estimate that could grow to 470,000 tons by 2025. And with that surging demand, POSCO has identified lithium as a major product for the company’s future business growth.

“POSCO is accelerating the lithium material industry after lithium was selected as the new growth business that will lead the future of the company,” said CEO Ohjoon Kwon when he became the head of POSCO in 2014. “If steel is the ‘rice’ of the current industry, lithium will take on that role in the future.”

What Is Lithium?

For such a common element, most people don’t know a lot about lithium. The soft, silver-white metal is the third element on the periodic table, making it the lightest metal and least-dense solid element. It is found commonly around the Earth, but because it is highly reactive, it is rarely found in a pure, elemental form, and instead is present in very low concentrations in sea water, in rock in the Earth’s crust (especially granite), and in brines and salt lakes.

Importantly, lithium is also very energy-dense—in fact, it has twice the energy density of the next closest alternative—making it a great option for portable energy storage applications.

Lithium, however, is quite difficult to extract. In the past, it was gathered on large salt farms, and required months for the water to evaporate, leaving lithium salts behind. But in 2010, POSCO (with support from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy) developed a high-efficiency technique for extracting lithium from water. Instead of a large and slow evaporation process, POSCO uses a chemical reaction to extract the lithium more quickly. It also increased its extraction capabilities to 200 tons per year.

Now POSCO is expanding its lithium processing even more, opening a cutting-edge lithium processing plant at Pozuelos Salt Lake in Argentina this year. Built high in the Argentine mountains, some 4,000 meters above sea level, the new plant had a groundbreaking ceremony on February 14, and once operational later this year it will boost POSCO’s annual lithium production to 2,500 tons.

Lithium in IT Gadgets

Lithium is a key element in lithium-ion batteries, which power many of our most popular devices, including mobile phones and laptops. Lithium-ion batteries can generate a 3 volt charge in each cell, much more than lead-acid and zinc-carbon cells, meaning it can provide more power more efficiently.

For portable devices, like mobile phones, size and weight are at a premium, so being able to contain more power means being able to create smaller and more useful mobile gadgets. Lithium-ion batteries are also commonly used in portable power tools, like drills, saws and lawn trimmers.

In addition to the success of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, regular lithium batteries are also in high demand, often used in such devices as pacemakers, cameras and watches.

Lithium for a Green Future

Beyond gadgets, lithium-ion batteries are a big part of the future of green energy. Solar, wind and other renewable energy sources are important, but you still need an energy storage device to store that power between peaks and valleys.

In particular, they are at the heart of the latest developments in electric cars, like the very popular Tesla cars. And as an electric car usually requires around 40 kilograms of lithium for its lithium-ion battery, that adds up quickly. In fact, Goldman Sachs estimates that the amount of lithium needed for electric car batteries will go up 11-fold over the next nine years.

But the eco-friendly applications don’t stop with cars. Motorcycles, large-scale residential facilities and industrial facilities are all increasingly using lithium-ion batteries, too.

POSCO Leads the Way Toward a Lithium Future

“With the supply of electric cars and the development of smart grid technology, the market is expected to result in massive growth,” noted CEO Kwon. “In order to raise competitiveness of the domestic secondary cell industry, it is crucial to develop lithium resources along with localizing core material.”

Pozuelos Lake, where POSCO is building its new processing facility, covers 106 square kilometers, and has an estimated 1.5 million tons of lithium reserves. That’s enough for millions of large-scale lithium-ion cells, which is good news for the environment and our planet.

On June 30, NCCP Chairman Ahn Chung Young announced the evaluation results for 2014 at its 35^th general meeting at Seoul Palace Hotel.

The evaluation is divided into four grades; best, excellent, satisfactory and fair. One hundred twelve major companies which have great economic influence, according to business type and of impact of shared growth among the top 450 major companies in terms of sales, were assessed. The value of shared growth indexes is quantified by evaluating the shared growth levels of major companies in order to create fair trade and a culture of shared growth among major companies and SMEs.

Only 19 companies, including POSCO, were awarded the highest grade, 37 companies were awarded an excellent grade, 42 companies, including POSCO E&C, received a satisfactory grade and the remaining 14 companies received a fair grade.

Companies who achieve the highest grade receive benefits for one year with the Fair Trade Commission, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Public Procurement Service and National Tax Service.

POSCO won additional accolades and was selected as one of “The Most Honorable Company” recipients. It has secured this title for three consecutive years along with Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, SK Global Chemicals and SK Telecom. This honor means being recognized as having earned the highest grade and be given the same incentives as the highest grade for an additional year, even in the case of receiving an excellent grade next year.

POSCO will develop “Creating Shared Value” (CSV) programs and policies which promote ways to achieve sustainable partnerships with cooperating companies and plans to continue operating as an exemplary company of shared growth by actively promoting these programs.