According to reporting by Aju Business Daily on Saturday, POSCO has recently been reassigning workers from the No. 2 wire rod plant. The plant has operated with four shifts, and two of those teams have already completed transfers to other departments. Industry officials expect operations to stop once the remaining reassignments are finished.
The No. 2 wire rod plant began operating in 1984 and has produced high-grade wire rod products. Wire rod is made by rolling steel semi-finished products into coils and is used as an intermediate material for items such as steel wire, wire rope and welding rods.
Pohang once ran four wire rod plants. It started operating the No. 1 plant in 1979 and completed the No. 2 plant in 1984 to begin producing high-grade wire rod. As demand rose, it later built the No. 3 and No. 4 plants. Annual capacity is about 750,000 tons for No. 1, 547,000 tons for No. 2, 850,000 tons for No. 3 and 700,000 tons for No. 4.
The No. 1 plant was already closed in 2024, citing continued oversupply in the global steel market. The pullback at the No. 2 plant is being driven by similar pressures, as structural oversupply in China has intensified price competition for commodity wire rod and demand has recovered more slowly than expected, squeezing profitability.
South Korea’s wire rod demand has stayed below 3 million tons a year over the past three years, hitting its lowest level since 2025. The Korea Iron & Steel Association said that last year domestic wire rod production, exports and domestic sales were 2,136,615 tons, 613,020 tons and 1,467,031 tons, respectively, each down by as much as nearly 18% from a year earlier.
Total domestic wire rod sales were 2,080,051 tons, down 16.7%, while domestic demand fell 7.3% to 2,607,605 tons. Meanwhile, the market share of imports from China rose to a record 34.3%.
The downsizing at Pohang is not limited to wire rod. POSCO is also said to be reviewing a plan to reduce continuous casting machines at the No. 2 continuous casting plant. Continuous casters are core steelmaking equipment that continuously casts molten steel into semi-finished products such as slabs or billets.
Because most rolling processes — including wire rod, plate and hot-rolled products — pass through continuous casting, cutting that equipment would signal a broader effort to streamline the overall production system alongside reduced wire rod output.
A POSCO official said the No. 2 wire rod plant has scaled back operations after shifting workers from two of its four shift teams to other departments, but added that the company is lowering utilization and does not yet have plans to fully close the plant.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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