On December 6, 2025, POSCO, a global steel industry giant, announced a major strategic move — its wholly-owned logistics subsidiary, POSCO Logistics, has officially completed local enterprise registration procedures in Vietnam and fully launched operations in December. This layout is not an isolated expansion of logistics nodes, but a key step for POSCO to deepen its penetration into the Southeast Asian market and improve the steel industry chain, marking the substantive stage of its strategic transformation from steel manufacturing to integrated "resource-production-logistics" chain operation.
As a core strategic fulcrum of POSCO in Southeast Asia, the launch of the Vietnam logistics subsidiary will focus on supply chain optimization of core steel products such as stainless steel and carbon steel. By integrating scattered resources and upgrading management models, it will address regional logistics pain points and provide more efficient and stable logistics service support for global customers.
POSCO has been deeply rooted in the Vietnamese market for many years and has built a complete localized production system covering stainless steel, section steel, secondary battery materials and other products. Among them, POSCO VST serves as a core stainless steel production base, long-term catering to high-end manufacturing and export demands in the region. However, previously, the logistics business of various subsidiaries under the group was scattered and entrusted to multiple local third-party service providers in Vietnam, leading to problems such as low coordination efficiency, information opacity, and difficulty in cost control in the logistics link.
The newly established Vietnam logistics subsidiary will take on the core role of a "resource integrator": on the one hand, it will fully centralize all logistics contracts of the group's businesses in Vietnam, incorporating scattered links such as transportation, warehousing, and customs clearance into a unified management system; on the other hand, it will build a digital logistics management platform to realize full-process visualized tracking from the import of stainless steel raw materials, production scheduling and transportation, to finished product delivery and cross-border export. Through this model, POSCO will break the information barriers in the previous logistics links, making the transportation status, warehousing location, and customs clearance progress of each batch of goods real-time traceable, and providing accurate data support for supply chain decision-making.
Although Vietnam's logistics market has great potential, it has long been plagued by industry pain points such as high costs and low efficiency. Data shows that the proportion of Vietnam's logistics costs in GDP is as high as 16%-20%, far exceeding the global average of 10%-12%. The core cruxes include inadequate infrastructure, over-reliance on road transportation (accounting for more than 70%), cumbersome customs clearance procedures, and backward warehousing management.
The operation of POSCO's Vietnam logistics subsidiary will address these problems in a targeted manner:
- In terms of cost optimization, by scaling up and integrating logistics demands, it will enhance bargaining power with carriers and warehousing service providers, while reducing communication costs and resource waste in intermediate links, which is expected to significantly reduce comprehensive logistics costs;
- In terms of time control, it will optimize transportation routes through a unified scheduling system to reduce empty driving rates, and pre-connect customs clearance processes relying on the digital platform, simplifying cumbersome administrative procedures, shortening cargo detention time, greatly improving the precision of controlling customer delivery cycles, and making the distribution response speed of stainless steel and other products more competitive.
The launch of the Vietnam logistics subsidiary is not an isolated regional node, but an important supplement to POSCO's global logistics network. At present, POSCO Logistics has established local legal person institutions in China, Thailand, Slovenia, Canada and other places, forming a global logistics layout covering Asia, Europe and the Americas. The addition of the Vietnam company will further open up regional logistics channels, enabling more efficient connection between Southeast Asian production bases and the global market.
From a regional strategic perspective, Vietnam, as an important node country along the "Belt and Road", not only has a logistics market potential with an average annual growth rate of over 6%, but also becomes a hub connecting China, Southeast Asia and the global market by virtue of its geographical advantages. By building an exclusive logistics system in Vietnam, POSCO can not only provide stable supply chain guarantee for local production bases, but also radiate the steel product demands of surrounding countries. Meanwhile, it will form a synergistic effect with other Southeast Asian production bases such as Indonesia — POSCO has previously cooperated with China's Tsingshan Holding Group to build a 2 million-ton stainless steel production base in Indonesia, and the Vietnam logistics subsidiary will become a key logistics link connecting Indonesia's raw material supply, Vietnam's production and processing, and global market distribution.
Behind this strategic layout of POSCO lies a profound insight into the global steel industry pattern. Currently, the global stainless steel market scale is continuously growing. It is expected to achieve a 72% growth from 2024 to 2032, eventually reaching 318.9 billion US dollars. As an emerging market, Southeast Asia has become a core engine for steel demand growth due to factors such as accelerated infrastructure construction and the rise of manufacturing industry.
By improving the supply chain through the Vietnam logistics subsidiary, POSCO will further consolidate its share in the high-end steel market in Southeast Asia. Especially in the field of technology-intensive products such as stainless steel, an efficient supply chain will become an important competitive edge to attract customers. Meanwhile, this layout will provide a replicable model for POSCO's global business expansion — taking regional logistics subsidiaries as fulcrums, linking local production bases, and building an integrated "production + logistics" service system, thus establishing insurmountable supply chain barriers in the global steel industry competition.
With the full operation of the Vietnam logistics subsidiary, POSCO's industrial chain advantages in Southeast Asia will be further highlighted. In the future, relying on this logistics hub, POSCO will continue to provide global customers with more cost-effective, stable and efficient supply services of stainless steel and other steel products, while accelerating the implementation of its "global production + localized service" strategy, and occupying a more favorable position in the wave of global steel industry restructuring.
