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36 min ago 2 min read
Posco Air Solution (Posco), the industrial gas arm of Posco Group, has completed construction of a 130,000 Nm³ per year high-purity rare gases facility at the Donghoan site of its Gwangyang Works steel complex in South Korea.
The plant will produce high-purity xenon, krypton, and neon by refining crude gas feedstock extracted from its oxygen plants in an integrated process.
Posco says the facility will support the domestic aerospace industry and meet around 52% of South Korea’s semiconductor sector demand for rare gases.
This comes as the company aims to localise high-purity gas production for key industries that are import-dependent and continue to scale the supply of oxygen and nitrogen needed in its steelmaking operations.
Chang In-hwa, CEO of POSCO Holdings, said, “Amid intensifying instability in global supply chains for key materials…we can now directly produce and stably supply essential materials for advanced industries…using our own technology.”
Semiconductor market
South Korea is the global leader in memory chip fabrication, and high-purity xenon, krypton, and neon are required in semiconductor lithography and etching processes.
According to the US International Trade Administration (ITA), South Korea-based electronic manufacturing firms Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix account for 73% of the global dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) market share and 51% of the NAND flash market.
In a 2022 policy brief, the European Commission also reported South Korea as Asia’s leading consumer of electronic speciality gases.
The same policy brief named Russia as the top exporter of xenon to South Korea, as well as China and Ukraine as significant suppliers of krypton and neon. The US was named as a major exporter of all three rare gases to South Korea.
Between 2019 and 2021, Ukraine and Russia supplied South Korea with 46%, 48% and 34% of xenon, krypton, and neon imports, respectively.
According to , South Korea’s total gas demand for the electronics and electrical industry is 11,200 tonnes per day and accounts for 21% of gas demand.
