By Kang Seung-woo
Hyundai Steel has cemented its billing as a top-tier global manufacturer of rolling mills, becoming the first local player to make one to produce 5-meter wide ship plates, the company announced Thursday.
According to Korea’s second-largest steelmaker, the company held a ceremony at its Pohang steel plant to celebrate the shipment of the machine to India’s Essar Steel, an affiliate of the Essar Group.
The rolling mill for 5-meter wide ship plate entails a complicated product development and manufacturing process, and thus far only four companies in Germany, Japan, Sweden and China have dominated the market.
Hyundai used its independent technology to manufacture the mill.
Annual demand worldwide for 5-meter wide plates is approximately 25,000 tons and about 3,000 tons, or 12 percent of the total, are used in Korea by POSCO, Dongkuk Steel and Hyundai.
The Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province-based steelmaker, headed by CEO Park Seung-ha, expects that the introduction of the mill will stabilize the price of the large ship plates, which have been imported for local use to date, and boost the local steel industry’s global competitiveness.
Hyundai is looking to achieve a 5 percent global market share by the end of 2011 and it has set its sights on 15 percent by 2014 through mass production from 2012.
“As there are only a handful of suppliers of 5-meter wide ship plate, the price is pretty high and often there are delays in delivery. But we successfully manufactured the facility based on our own technologies, so we can shorten the time frame and offer reasonable prices,” said an official of Hyundai Steel.