포스코가 26일 포스코중타이에어솔루션을 출범시키며, 올해 11월 광양 동호안 남측에 생산공장을 짓고, 2025년 4분기 희귀가스 상업생산을 본격화한다.

▲(Fourth from the left) POSCO Heavy Industries Air Solutions CEO Jeong Soon-gu and other POSCO Heavy Industries Air Solutions executives and employees are taking a commemorative photo to celebrate the company’s founding on August 26.
Construction of a production plant on a 39,000㎡ site south of Donghoan, Gwangyang, begins in November this year
POSCO will build a production plant on the southern side of Donghoan, Gwangyang in November of this year and begin commercial production of rare gases in earnest in the fourth quarter of 2025.
POSCO announced that POSCO Heavy Industries Air Solutions will be launched on August 26 and will begin full-scale participation in the high-purity rare gas production business.
POSCO Zhongtai Air Solution is a joint venture between POSCO Holdings and China Zhongtai Cryogenic Technology (hereinafter referred to as Zhongtai) with a 75.1% and 24.9% stake, respectively.
Zhongtai is a gas-related equipment manufacturing and engineering company listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China, and has specialized technologies in the gas field, including rare gas production facilities and air separation devices.
High-purity rare gases refer to neon (Ne), xenon (Xe), and krypton (Kr) gases with a purity of 99.999%, which are mainly used in cutting-edge industries such as semiconductors, displays, and satellite propulsion.
This rare gas exists in extremely small quantities in the air, so its production requires large air separation units located in steel mills.
In addition, since the purity of rare gases produced from large-scale air separators is less than 41%, they must undergo high-purity refining to be used in semiconductor production.
So far, high-purity rare gases have been produced overseas, including in the United States, China, and Ukraine. It has been mainly imported. In Korea, POSCO is the only company that has a large-scale air separation facility, so it has favorable conditions for producing high-purity rare gases.
POSCO Heavy Industries Air Solutions will begin construction of a high-purity rare gas production plant on a 39,000㎡ site south of Donghoan, Gwangyang, starting in November of this year.
Commercial production is planned to begin in the fourth quarter of 2025. The high-purity rare gases produced in this way will be supplied to domestic and foreign semiconductor companies such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Intel.
Through this project, POSCO Heavy Industries Air Solution plans to stabilize the supply chain by domestically producing high-purity rare gases for semiconductors, which were mostly dependent on imports. It also expects to expand the industrial gas business portfolio of POSCO Group by processing rare gases produced from large-scale air separation units at steel mills into high-profit products.
Jeong Soon-gu, President of POSCO Heavy Industries Air Solutions, said, “Our company has sufficient capabilities in building rare gas facilities, starting with POSCO’s Industrial Gas Division. We plan to safely build high-purity rare gas production facilities and production systems in the future.”