By IANS
Bhubaneswar : South Korean steel major Posco Wednesday said it will adopt its self-developed FINEX technology for its proposed $12 billion greenfield integrated steel project in Orissa, coming up under the largest foreign direct investment in India.
"This technology will make Posco-India steel work most competitive in Indian steel sector," Posco-India CMD Soung-Sik Cho said in a release.
It is the innovative, future generation of steel-making technologies as replacement of the blast furnace method, which so far has been evaluated as most competitive among steel making technologies in the world, the company said.
Finex eliminates the first step in the steel-making process of sintering and coking and allows the direct use of low-cost ore fines and coal, bringing down overall plant installation and operational costs.
The new technology also reduces pollution, producing significantly less sulphur and nitrogen oxide than current furnaces.
The Indian plant will be the world's first steel mill of the company outside South Korea to use FINEX on a large scale, Posco said.
Moreover, FINEX can better utilise the Indian iron ore containing high alumina compared to the blast-furnace technology, and thus is expected to substantially reduce the proposed amount of swapping of iron ore required for the project, it said.
Posco, one of the world's biggest steel makers, signed a deal with the Orissa government in June 2005 to set up a plant near the port town of Paradeep, some 120 km from this state capital, by 2016.
The firm started working on the development of the new technology in 1992. It celebrated the successful completion of a plant commercialising FINEX in Pohang steelworks on May 30, in the presence of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and more than 1,000 dignitaries from all over the world including a team of officials from the Orissa government.
Its total investment into R&D in order to develop and commercialise FINEX process was approximately $596 million, the release said.