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Korea
Star Group (SGI) + POSCO Int'l
Sintered NdFeB permanent magnets and magnet assemblies, principally EV traction motor magnets, plus hard disk drive voice coil motor magnets and industrial magnets. Star Group is repeatedly described by Korea's trade ministry and Korean trade press as the country's only mass producer of rare-earth permanent magnets. It co-developed reduced-heavy-rare-earth magnets with Hyundai Motor. POSCO International's contribution is commercial rather than metallurgical: overseas sales, automaker offtake contracts and non-Chinese rare earth feedstock sourcing.
At a glance
- Founded
- 1994 — Founding year for Star Group Ind. Co., Ltd. as published by a trade magazine; not confirmed against a Korean corporate registry filing. The Vietnamese subsidiary SGI VINA was established in 2022. POSCO International is a separate listed company and is not a founder of Star Group.
- Headquarters
- Star Group: Dalseo-gu, Daegu, South Korea, with the magnet plant at Hyeonpung, Daegu. POSCO International is headquartered in Seoul and Incheon and is a separate legal entity.
- Ownership
- Star Group is privately held and unlisted; its shares trade on Korean over-the-counter platforms. At the end of 2023, Hyundai BNG Steel held 18.7% directly and a private equity fund it majority-owns held a further 18.3%. A KOSDAQ listing was pursued in 2024 but no completed listing was found. No public source shows POSCO International holding any equity in Star Group: the relationship is commercial. Their jointly announced US plant was reported with the equity split still undetermined, and no subsequent announcement of an agreed stake was found.
- Revenue
- KRW 105.3 billion
Reported, FY2025.
This is Star Group's own revenue and is not POSCO International's, whose group revenue is in the tens of trillions of won and is overwhelmingly trading, energy and steel. Star Group's revenue has fallen every year from KRW 168.9 billion in FY2022, and FY2025 carried an operating loss of KRW 34.1 billion. The figures come from Korean credit-information services republishing the filed statements; the audited filings on Korea's DART system could not be retrieved directly.
Source
Capacity
Each date below links to the document the figure came from. A capacity figure with no source is not on this page.
| What | Figure | Status | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sintered NdFeB, Hyeonpung plant, Daegu — described by Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy as the country's first domestic production of neodymium rare-earth permanent magnets | 1,000 t/yr | Operating | Oct 2023 |
| NdFeB magnet products, SGI VINA, Bac Chu Lai Industrial Park, Quang Nam, Vietnam — a USD 80 million investment on 17 hectares; reported operating from February 2025 | 4,000 t/yr per one report and 5,000 t/yr per two others; see conflicts | Operating | May 2025 |
| United States permanent magnet plant announced jointly by POSCO International and Star Group. No site has been selected in any public source; Texas, Tennessee and Arizona were named as candidates in 2023 and nothing more specific has appeared since. | 3,000 t/yr initial, expandable to 5,000 t/yr | Announced | Oct 2023 |
Narrative
Star Group Ind. Co., founded in 1994 and based in Daegu, is described by Korea's trade ministry and Korean trade press as the country's only mass producer of sintered NdFeB permanent magnets. Its Hyeonpung plant began operating in October 2023 at a published 1,000 metric tons a year, and its Vietnamese subsidiary SGI VINA in Quang Nam province began operating in 2025. POSCO International, a listed Korean trading company, is the commercial partner rather than the manufacturer: in March 2024 it announced roughly KRW 1.16 trillion of permanent magnet supply contracts with North American and European automakers, to be produced by Star Group from non-Chinese rare earths. A jointly announced US plant of 3,000 metric tons a year still has no disclosed site or equity split.
Where public sources disagree
- This is not a joint venture between equals, and on the public record it is not an equity relationship at all. The only confirmed structure is commercial: POSCO International wins automaker contracts and sources non-Chinese rare earths, and Star Group manufactures.
- The Vietnam plant's capacity is reported as 4,000 t/yr by one Vietnamese outlet and 5,000 t/yr by two Korean ones. No reconciling statement was found.
- The Vietnam plant's start date moved repeatedly, from the third quarter of 2024 to the second half of 2024 to February 2025.
- No US site has been announced in three years. If a US plant is recorded anywhere it should read as announced with no location.
- A separate May 2026 POSCO International arrangement with ReElement Technologies for a US rare earth separation and magnet complex does not name Star Group and should not be merged with this row.
- An English trade profile places the Korean plant at Yeongcheong near Seoul, which contradicts every Korean source: the plant is at Hyeonpung in Daegu.
Sources
- POSCO International establishes a China-excluded supply chain for rare earth magnets — POSCO Group Newsroom (2024-03-18)
- POSCO International to build a permanent magnet factory in the US with Star Group — KED Global (2023-10-03)
- Korea's first domestic rare earth permanent magnet production begins — Hyeonpung, Daegu, 1,000 t/yr (Korean) — Steel & Metal News (2023-10-30)
- Star Group to operate an $80 million magnet factory in Vietnam from February — The Investor (2024-12-27)
- Star Group unlisted stock information — consolidated revenue FY2021 to FY2025 (Korean) — Seoul Exchange (accessed 2026-09-18)
- Korean magnet manufacturer Star Group rises in prominence — Magnetics Magazine (2024-04-08)
How this page is sourced
Everything here comes from public sources — company filings, annual reports, exchange announcements, government releases and trade press. Every figure is linked to the document it came from and carries the date that document was published, because a capacity number without a date is not a fact, it is a rumor with a decimal point.
What is deliberately absent: material nonpublic information. I have spent more than two decades in this industry and a good deal of what I know about these companies I learned under NDA. Those obligations do not expire and they do not bend for a website. Nothing I have been told in confidence appears here in any form, and nothing on this page — or missing from it — should be read as a signal about what I know privately. I hold NDAs absolutely. It is the reason clients tell me things.
Judgment is the other thing left out on purpose. This page reports what has been published and who published it. Whether a target is credible, whether a ramp will hold, whether a capacity figure survives contact with the plant behind it — that is the work I do for clients, and it does not belong in a free reference page.
Where public sources disagree, I say so rather than picking a winner. Where a figure has not been published, the field says so rather than carrying an estimate. An empty field is information too.
Public filings tell you what a company has said. Whether it holds up is a different question, and the one I get hired to answer.
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