South Korea’s battery material and chemical company POSCO Future M Co was recognized by Fortune Asia as one of the top 30 most innovative companies in Asia that will drive future growth, the company said on Thursday.

The 2024 Fortune Asia Future 30 award was presented at the Fortune Innovation Forum that took place in Hong Kong the previous day.

Fortune Asia, a global business magazine, selects the top 30 companies with long-term growth potential and innovation from over 700 companies in the Asia-Pacific region with annual revenues or market capitalization exceeding $10 billion.

The companies were evaluated and selected by Boston Consulting Group’s Henderson Institute, which leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning trained on growth indicators and data, and systematically analyzed 19 evaluation factors across four areas (strategy and technology, investment, workforce, and financial structure) to increase confidence in the long-term growth of the selected companies.

The 30 companies announced for the first time in 2024 included Alibaba Health Information Technology Ltd, BYD Co., NIO Inc., and EVE Energy Co. in the eco-friendly, AI, and electric vehicle sectors. Meanwhile, other Korean companies including Naver Corp., Celltrion Inc., and Kakao Corp., joined POSCO Future M on the list.

POSCO Future M was recognized for its transformation to a future-oriented business structure by expanding its business fields from industrial basic materials such as refractories to various new businesses such as secondary batteries and advanced chemical materials and laying the foundation for sustained long-term growth.

POSCO Future M successfully localized battery core materials after entering the anode material business in 2011 and merging with POSCO ESM Co., a cathode material company within the POSCO Group, in 2019. The company is currently the sole company in Korea to produce both anode and cathode materials.

POSCO Future M has been securing differentiated competitiveness and increasing market share by proactively developing next-generation materials, expanding global production capabilities, and building smart factories in response to the electric vehicle market’s rapid growth.

As a result, its revenue, which stood at 1.48 trillion won ($ 1.1 billion) in 2019 when it first entered the cathode material business, recorded 4.76 trillion won in 2023 and grew approximately 220 percent in just four years.

By Jung You-jung and Yoon Yeon-hae

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