Dongkuk Steel has decided to add a premium color-coated steel sheet production line with an annual capacity of 70,000 tons at its Busan plant.
Targeting the start of operations in the second half of 2020, the company plans to invest approximately 25 billion won to strengthen its high-value-added color-coated steel sheet business.
In addition, Dongkuk Steel plans to rationalize its existing color-coated steel sheet production lines, expanding its production capacity from the current 8 lines and 750,000 tons to 9 lines and 850,000 tons by the second half of 2021. This makes it the world's largest operation, compared with competitors that produce a maximum of 100,000 to 400,000 tons across 1 to 4 lines.
Dongkuk Steel plans to configure the newly added color-coated steel sheet line as a wide-format line (1,600 mm) that combines laminate steel sheet and ultraviolet (UV) coating processes—the first of its kind in the world. On this line, the company plans to produce specialized, high-value-added color-coated steel sheets tailored to customer needs, such as fluorine laminate steel sheets and new products that integrate digital printing steel sheets with UV coating. The line targets the increasingly diverse needs of home appliance manufacturers and the premium building materials market.
This decision is part of Dongkuk Steel's "super-gap" strategy to further strengthen and lead the market in its color-coated steel sheet business, where it holds a firm competitive advantage in production infrastructure, quality, sales capabilities, R&D capacity, and service.
Since 2011, Dongkuk Steel has concentrated its investments in the color-coated steel sheet business, leading the market by expanding production capacity and introducing brand marketing with brands such as "Luxteel." As a result, Dongkuk Steel's color-coated steel sheet business has grown from a building-materials-focused production scale of around 400,000 tons through 2011 to a large-scale business of 600,000 to 700,000 tons spanning home appliances and premium building materials since 2012.
The share of color-coated steel sheets in Dongkuk Steel's revenue (on a separate basis) expanded from 11.5% in 2012 to 17.6% last year, and the company expects this investment to raise the figure to around 20% going forward. Dongkuk Steel's strategy is to proactively respond to the trend toward premiumization in the global home appliance and building materials markets and to continue investing with a focus on high-margin color-coated steel sheets.