Ecopro Designated as Pohang Opportunity Development Zone... Increasing Investment and Employment

Additional 2 Trillion Investment in Blue Valley Connecting Yeongilman Bay

EcoPro has concretized its investment roadmap for Pohang as a follow-up measure after signing an agreement with the government on the Opportunity Development Zone.

Song Hojun, CEO of EcoPro, stated at the Q3 meeting held on the 1st, regarding the designation of the Opportunity Development Zone, "It is recognized that, based on the strong driving force of former EcoPro Chairman Lee Dong-chae, we played a leading role in transforming Pohang from a steel city into a secondary battery city," and emphasized, "Taking the designation of the Opportunity Development Zone as an opportunity, we should use Pohang as the mother factory and transfer successful know-how to Canada and Hungary."

Song Hojun, CEO of EcoPro
Photo by Yonhap News

The Opportunity Development Zone is a government-supported package that includes tax and financial support and regulatory exemptions to attract large-scale corporate investments to local areas. The government has designated a total of eight locations, including Pohang, as the first Opportunity Development Zones.

EcoPro established its headquarters and production lines in Ochang, Chungbuk, and as order volumes increased, it built a second production base in Pohang. Last year, it shipped 120,000 tons of cathode materials (based on SNE), ranking first globally in high-nickel cathode materials.

During this process, EcoPro actively hired talent from local regions. As of the end of last year, out of 3,362 EcoPro employees, 3,017 had local addresses, accounting for 90%. Employees who graduated from local universities and high schools located in local areas numbered 2,867 (85.3%).

With the designation of the Opportunity Development Zone, EcoPro plans to increase local talent employment and investment. Since 2016, EcoPro has invested about 2 trillion KRW in a 150,000-pyeong site in the Yeongilman Industrial Complex in Pohang to build an ecosystem capable of producing 150,000 tons of battery cathode materials annually.

Furthermore, it is coordinating a schedule to invest an additional approximately 2 trillion KRW over the next five years in a 210,000-pyeong area in the Blue Valley Industrial Complex. Once the Blue Valley Industrial Complex investment is completed, the number of directly employed personnel is expected to reach 4,000.

Additionally, the Blue Valley Industrial Complex will apply the 'Closed Loop Eco System Version 2.0,' which uses eco-friendly construction methods and improves productivity, and will expand this system to Canada, Hungary, and other locations. The Closed Loop Eco System is a system that implements the entire secondary battery cathode material production process?from recycling waste batteries to producing cathode materials?within a single complex.

Meanwhile, EcoPro CNG recently began infrastructure construction such as preparing warehouses for the construction of a pretreatment plant in the Blue Valley Industrial Complex, Donghae-myeon, Nam-gu, Pohang, Gyeongbuk. As the first family company to move into the Blue Valley Industrial Complex, the plant is expected to be completed in 2027, establishing production facilities capable of producing 24,000 tons annually (wet basis).