South Korea’s steel giant POSCO and an IT service provider POSCO ICT decided to establish a joint venture focusing on the light-emitting diode (LED) lighting business by joining hands with Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
According to a source from the industry on Wednesday, POSCO ICT and Seoul Semiconductor plan to hold the board of directors’ meeting on Thursday individually and have the agenda related to establishing the joint venture passed.
POSCO ICT will be the largest shareholder of this joint venture, while POSCO and Seoul Semiconductor hold some parts of the shares. Initially, POSCO ICT and Seoul Semiconductor had discussed creating a bilateral joint venture, but to create synergy for the entire POSCO group, POSCO has decided to take some stakes of the joint venture.
POSCO entered into the LED lighting business in 2009, acquiring 1.01% stakes of Seoul Semiconductor by investing 25 billion won ($22.44 million). Afterwards it weighed more heavily on POSCO ICT to be in charge of the LED lighting business promotions.
Upon the establishment of the joint venture, POSCO can accelerate its LED business.Seoul Semiconductor, a specialized LED company leading the industry in South Korea,is highly praised for its technology.
For the new joint venture, Seoul Semiconductor will be in charge of providing LED chips,whereas POSCO ICT takes care of supply, management and installment of lightings.
POSCO announced its goal to raise 10% of the total revenue from the LED business by investing seven trillion won to green businesses such as LED by 2018.
[Written by Jong-wook Park, Jang-won Hong - Jin Choi / edited by Soyoung Chung]