In a statement, POSCO said the lab, which was officially opened during a ceremony 11 May, is part of an effort to offer customers a “one-stop shop” for materials and materials verification. 

”Customers may find it difficult to adopt newly developed steel grades as materials right away, but if POSCO evaluates formability, which is mandatory for selection of steel products, on behalf of customers, and provides the results, it is expected that the burden of selecting new steel grades will be reduced for customers,” POSCO said. 

The lab is equipped with a 2,000-ton hydraulic press, which will be used to evaluate formability of large components. It also has a high-speed crash tester, a full-scale fatigue tester, and a wheel-durability evaluator. 

"We implemented customer-oriented core research infrastructure that can help us evaluate products in advance in a production environment similar to that of our customers and develop leading technologies, thus providing preemptive and proactive solutions to customers," POSCO president In-hwan Oh said. 

The lab’s opening follows completion of POSCO’s US$228.2 million continuous galvanizing line at its Gwangyang works. The new line, designated as the No. 7,  was built exclusively to produce POSCO’s GIGA STEEL, an advanced high-strength steel with a tensile strength of 1.5 GPa. 

The line can make both galvanized and galvannealed sheet and has a capacity of 500,000 tons.

“POSCO opens up a new horizon in automotive steel with the completion of (line). This new line will allow POSCO to continue to provide differentiated products and customized solutions through smart technology,” said POSCO chief executive Ohjoon Kwon. 

Prior to the line’s completion, POSCO could make steels in strengths of no more than 1.2 GPa due to surface and quality problems that would arise before and after coating. 

To enable production of sheet with higher tensile strengths, POSCO developed a “high-hydrogen, rapid-cooling technology” to produce a commercially viable product, it said. 

With the addition of the No. 7 line, POSCO now has seven galvanizing lines in South Korea, two in Mexico, and five throughout Thailand, India and China. Combined, the company expects to produce 10 million tons by 2018.