India's JSW Steel said on Tuesday it has signed a preliminary agreement with South Korea's steel major POSCO to set up an integrated steel plant with an initial capacity of 5 million metric tons a year.
JSW Steel, India's largest steelmaker by capacity, will also explore a collaboration with POSCO on battery materials for electric vehicles as well as for renewable energy for the proposed steel plant's requirement, it said.
"This JV (joint venture) also entails collaboration for renewable energy for a state-of-the-art integrated steel plant and for setting up an EV ecosystem in India," Sajjan Jindal, chairman of JSW Group, said in a statement.
POSCO runs a cold-rolled, galvanised mill with an annual production capacity of 1.8 million metric tons in the western state of Maharashtra, supplying automotive steel to India's leading automakers.
It dropped plans a few years ago for what was seen as India's biggest foreign investment - a $12-billion steel plant project with an annual capacity of 12 million tons in the eastern state of Odisha - stung by inordinate delays in land acquisition.
In 2022, POSCO also entered into a pact with Indian billionaire Gautam Adani's infrastructure group to invest about $5 billion on projects that included setting up an integrated steel mill in the western state of Gujarat.
