At a time when the world is grappling with global warming and its adverse impact on the environment, Posco, the world's fourth largest steel maker, has come out with an innovative solution to save marine ecology and help the fishermen folk.
The Ministry for food, agriculture, forestry and fisheries in South Korea has decided to team up with Posco for a marine project, which will create aquatic forests and reefs, using by-products from steel making.
Under this agreement, the South Korean steel behemoth will supply steel slag to the ministry for free so that the material can be utilized for the construction of underwater facilities aimed at fostering fish farming locally.
More importantly, this initiative of Posco is expected to bring long-term benefits for the fishermen community near Paradeep in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district where the company is setting up a 12-million tonne per annum steel plant at a cost of Rs 54000 crore.
“There will be long-term benefits for fisher-folk of our project area in Orissa, in case we apply this method after due permission from the government authorities”, Choon-Kuhn Kwon, managing director, Posco India said in a release.
“This work with the marine eco-system is significant since it is using Posco’s products and technology developed at the company's own research institute”, he added.
The land acquisition process at our plant site is on-track and the company expects to start earth-filling work shortly, Kwon informed.
Posco and Pohang Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology, a technological institute established by the steel giant, have conducted a pilot operation using slag for marine facilities in sea areas on the nation's southern and eastern coasts for the past 10 years.
Slag being biologically safe and effective in creating seaweed beds, Posco developed Triton, a brand of steel slag which is used to create the reefs.
Steel slag is produced during the separation of the molten steel from impurities in furnaces. It is an environmentally friendly material that captures carbon dioxide during production, and its ferrous content is known to enhance the growth of marine plants.
