South Korea’s Posco and Japan’s Mitsui & Co. will sign an agreement to launch a joint venture providing services to transport, store and distribute coal, iron ore, and ferroalloy, Posco said. The two companies will establish a joint venture in South Korea by the end of January with an initial capital of KRW 500 million. This will later be raised to KRW 20 billion. Poscowill hold a 51% stake in the new company while Mitsui will own 49%.
The joint venture, named Posco Terminal Ltd, is expected to initially handle up to 2 million tons of material a year. However, with additional investment, the company is likely to be able to handle 4 million tons by 2007, said Posco. Posco and Mitsui also plan to invest a combined KRW 72.4 billion to build a storage yard with Posco spending KRW 51.8 billion and Mitsui investing KRW 20.6 billion, the South Korean company said. The joint venture will ship raw materials from Australia, Brazil and South Africa to users in Asia.
