POSCO opens Korea‘s first advanced manufacturing startup hub in Pohang

POSCO Group has opened South Korea’s first incubation hub dedicated to advanced manufacturing startups in the eastern coastal city of Pohang, aiming to help young companies scale up by lowering the cost of pilot production and manufacturing infrastructure.

The group said Wednesday it opened the RIST Manufacturing Innovation Scaleup Incubation Center, a joint project with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, North Gyeongsang Province and the city of Pohang.

Built on the commercialization expertise of the Research Institute of Industrial Science & Technology (RIST), a POSCO Group-affiliated research institute, the two-story, 4,074-square-meter facility can accommodate up to 10 startups. It is Korea’s first specialized incubation center for advanced manufacturing ventures.

Four POSCO-backed startups have already moved into the center – Enforus, which develops high-temperature water electrolysis technology for hydrogen production; Solarize Inc., a maker of photovoltaic inverters; Verycore Materials, which develops environmentally friendly coatings; and EA Phos, which produces solvent extraction materials for secondary batteries.

Enforus is the first startup established under POSCO Holdings Inc.’s venture-building program, in which the company develops business concepts internally before spinning them off as independent ventures.

The company is developing high-efficiency hydrogen production technology considered critical to hydrogen-based steelmaking, a key decarbonization technology for the steel industry.

Startups in advanced materials, energy and environmental technologies often struggle to move beyond the prototype stage because of the high cost of demonstration facilities and commercial-scale production.

To address that challenge, the center provides shared manufacturing infrastructure, including cooling water, compressed air and six industrial gases, including hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. RIST will also provide technical support, including testing, analysis, reliability assessments and process design.

POSCO Group will support startups throughout the commercialization process, from identifying promising ventures and conducting research and development to scaling up production, commercializing products and expanding into global markets.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the North Gyeongsang provincial government will also support the center’s operations.