The Indispensable Linchpin for U.S. National Security

We’ve seen that recent trade policies, especially the introduction of new tariffs, have accelerated, and continue to accelerate, a shift in supply chains toward “friendly” countries. This is not a brand-new phenomenon, but the current environment has shown that adaptability is more important than ever for success in today’s economy. Korea is a country that has evolved and adapted rapidly. What can a Korean company do to survive and thrive in this environment? And more specifically, what opportunities do you see for Korea in this supply chain realignment?

We are a 51-year-old company, and in that time, we have grown from a single plant to a diversified, global operation. Our flagship facility is in Korea, but we also operate in Australia and other parts of the world.

Korea Zinc is distinct within the industry as a “custom smelter.” Unlike vertically integrated players such as Teck in Canada, Hindustan Zinc in India, or Boliden in Europe, we do not own mines to supply our smelters. Instead, we source nearly all of our raw material from third parties on the open market. This business model allows us to focus entirely on smelting and refining, where we generate value through operational excellence and a disciplined focus on efficiency within our segment of the value chain.

I would venture to say that among non-ferrous metal smelters and refineries globally, Korea Zinc is probably the most profitable, and that’s not because our sector is an easy place to make money. It’s intensely competitive. We face the same pressures as other producers of critical minerals, where China dominates, whether it’s nickel, tungsten, or other key commodities. In metals like copper, lead, and zinc, China accounts for more than half the global market. For more than five decades, we have competed directly with Chinese producers in all the metals we produce, and we’ve managed to remain both competitive and profitable.

There is no single formula for long-term success in our industry. However, one constant has been the importance of agility, the ability to respond quickly and decisively to shifting market dynamics. Our metallurgical core revolves around three primary metals: zinc, lead, and copper. From these refining circuits, we also produce a suite of secondary metals, such as antimony, bismuth, and indium, and in the past and future, germanium, gallium, as well as precious metals like silver, gold, and platinum.

This product diversity is a key strength. For example, the global zinc market this year is particularly challenging for smelters: treatment charges, the fees smelters receive from mines, have fallen to historic lows, hurting smelter profitability. However, while zinc has contributed less to our bottom line, other metals, notably antimony, bismuth, and indium, have experienced sharp increases in profitability, driven by geopolitical shifts and tightening global supply. This unexpected shift has allowed us to deliver one of our stronger financial performances despite headwinds in our primary metal.

We’ve built a well-balanced production portfolio that includes industrial metals, precious metals, and minor critical minerals. This diversification provides a natural hedge: when one market experiences weakness, others may remain resilient or even outperform. Of course, there will always be cyclical downturns, but for all our products to decline simultaneously would signal a global economic crisis, which is unlikely under normal circumstances.

Our agility in responding to market signals is a key competitive advantage: at the start of this year, our annual antimony production capacity was around 3,000 tons. In response to rising demand, we optimized recovery processes and reallocated internal focus, positioning us to produce close to 4,500 tons by year-end. This type of rapid, effective response is only possible because of the robust and flexible production platform we’ve cultivated over many years.

Korea Zinc was established in 1974 as a zinc-only smelter producing 50,000 tons a year. Today, we produce about 650,000 tons annually in Korea, plus around 250,000 tons in Townsville, Australia, nearly 20 times growth. We’ve seen similar scaling in lead, copper, silver, and gold. However, we have reached a stage where simply increasing output is no longer the most effective path to sustainable or profitable growth. In today’s market, excess capacity, especially from certain players in China, can flood the market and depress prices. We have no intention of joining that race.

This understanding, that future growth must come from doing things differently, led to the development of our long-term growth strategy, which is known as the Troika Drive.

Yun B. Choi, Chairman of Korea Zinc, visits the Antimony Plant at the Onsan Refinery and examines the products

The Troika Drive was announced in 2022 to focus on three strategic pillars: renewable energy & hydrogen, secondary battery materials, and resource recycling. At that time, industries like secondary batteries were booming. Now in 2025, what have you learned, and how have these pillars strengthened Korea Zinc’s resilience?

Although we formally introduced the Troika Drive in 2022, we had been pursuing this strategy for several years prior. Importantly, the Troika Drive is closely aligned with our core competencies, they are strategic extensions of our existing strengths.

For example, our interest in renewable energy and hydrogen stems from the fact that smelting and refining consume vast amounts of electricity, our largest single operating cost. During my time as CEO of our Australian subsidiary, Sun Metals Corporation (2014–2019), we faced multiple spikes in energy prices. This drove us to seek alternaties, and in Australia, renewable energy, solar and wind, is by far the cheapest option, provided you manage generation variability.

We built a 125MW solar farm on land that was essentially free, a stark contrast to Korea, where land costs and lower solar irradiation make solar far more expensive. That success led us deeper into renewables. We are now a 30% owner of the MacIntyre Wind Farm project, soon to be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, and we have a major battery project in New South Wales close to financial close.

Hydrogen and ammonia have lost some of the market hype of a few years ago, but we remain committed. This year, we are commissioning a small but significant green hydrogen facility in Townsville, designed as a pilot to learn operational know-how. All the hydrogen we produce will be consumed in-house and contracted third parties, including running hydrogen-fueled trucks for our Australian refinery operation.  To this day, the most difficult challenge in developing green hydrogen or ammonia projects is finding offtake; we have never shied away from this challenge and are still trying to meet it head-on. We believe maintaining a foothold in hydrogen positions us to scale quickly when market demand rises.

Green Hydrogen Production

Your decision to focus on smelting and refining, without vertical integration into mining, runs counter to the prevailing trend toward fully integrated supply chains. And your environmental strategy is not just for investor relations; it delivers tangible profitability. Why take this unconventional approach?

It was not by choice. When my grandfather founded Korea Zinc 51 years ago, building the plant in Korea effectively made us a custom smelter. Korea had no domestic mines to supply us, so we had to buy all our feedstock internationally. We did try mining, but mining and smelting are fundamentally different businesses.

This necessity forced us to become agile. Agility is rarely a choice; it becomes essential when survival demands it. To remain competitive, we invested heavily in technological innovation, process automation, and, in recent years, renewable energy generation to manage costs.

Countries like China operate differently. For example, China transformed Indonesia into the world’s dominant nickel producer in under a decade, through state-backed investment. That kind of national-scale industrial policy is beyond the reach of private companies with fiduciary duties to shareholders.

Looking ahead to next year, what will be the key growth drivers for Korea Zinc?

One of Korea Zinc’s key growth drivers will be our second Troika pillar: battery materials. While renewable energy remains foundational, battery materials, particularly nickel, represent a critical area of focus. Nickel is the centerpiece of this segment, and we are building an All-in-One Nickel Refinery in Korea, scheduled to begin commercial operations in January 2027.

The name may sound unconventional, but it reflects the refinery’s unique capability: it can process all types of nickel-bearing feed, from mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) and matte to nickel concentrates, powders, and battery recycling “black mass.” In the past, we explored single-feed types, but market volatility made those approaches too vulnerable. We came to understand that our competitive advantage lies in adaptability, the same principle that has driven our success for decades in zinc, lead, and copper refining.

How is Korea Zinc progressing in renewable energy and other emerging sectors, and where do you see the next major growth opportunities?

I am confident that our renewable energy business, Ark Energy, will achieve profitability this year. That said, while I believe this year will mark an important milestone, it will still take at least a couple more years before the business truly reaches its full potential. Ark Energy will be a very unique (and I think, valuable), company, in a sense that it will be a profitable company with a robust pipeline of renewable projects, with an operational solar farm, a wind farm, one of the biggest BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) in the world, and a small yet meaningful green hydrogen operation.  The global energy market remains vast and complex, and for hydrogen, ammonia, or similar energy solutions to become globally relevant commodities, a number of factors, many of them beyond our direct control, will need to align.

At the same time, we are closely watching opportunities in critical minerals processing, particularly in the United States. This is an area that may require decisive, near-term action if we are to seize the potential. We also continue to develop our recycling business in the U.S., which has presented its share of challenges. However, these challenges have been invaluable learning experiences. We now possess a deep, end-to-end understanding of a highly complex recycling market, one that ranges from hyperscale data centers to small, family-run scrap operations. While we cannot claim to be omnipresent, we have strategically positioned ourselves in critical points across the supply chain.

Our U.S. recycling operations, PedalPoint LLC, in particular, are on track to achieve profitability as soon as this year, in only its third year since its inception.  From next year on, we are confident that PedalPoint will deliver meaningful revenue and profit growth, not to mention significant synergy with our refining business in Onsan. Recycling has become central to our overall strategy. It links directly to many of our initiatives, including hydrogen and renewable energy.

For instance, we have discovered that recycling solar panels is not only technically viable but also highly profitable, both from a smelting perspective and from the standpoint of sourcing and collecting panels at the end of their lifecycle. This creates value across multiple business segments. Our U.S. entity, PedalPoint, plays a critical role here, sourcing, collecting, and trading recyclable materials. These are then purchased by Korea Zinc, where they are processed into gold, copper, and other valuable metals. The profits generated in this segment are significant, and they enable us to expand further.  It should also be noted that there are not very many players in the world that can achieve this type of circularity at scale. 

This ties into a broader growth principle: one of the most effective ways to expand is simply to do more of what you already do well. For a time, we were unable to apply that principle in certain areas; for example, in Korea, it is physically impossible for us to increase our output and expand our footprint due to lack of land. But as renewable energy and hydrogen markets mature, we will be ready. We will not rush into premature investments, because while we are confident in the global shift toward hydrogen and ammonia, the timing remains uncertain. When the moment is right, we will scale aggressively and grow our returns.

The same logic applies to recycling. At present, we produce approximately 35,000 tons of copper annually, and notably, this is 100% recycled copper. We purchase no copper concentrates from mines, perhaps not out of ideology, but because we consider this approach more commercially advantageous. Our short-term goal, over the next five years, is to increase annual copper production to 150,000 tons, which represents a four- to fivefold increase. The biggest challenge to achieving this is securing sufficient feedstock, which comes primarily from e-waste, scrap, and other recycled materials. This is why we are heavily investing in our PedalPoint operations in the U.S., which I believe are finally reaching a point of real traction.

Similarly, in critical minerals processing, including but not limited to nickel, lithium, antimony, germanium, gallium, indium, bismuth, tellurium, to name a few, once we are ready, whether through expansions in Korea or by building facilities in the U.S., we expect to see significant growth. While construction and commissioning would take time, these are strategic moves that align with our broader growth vision.

In short, Troika Drive, the framework guiding our diversification, does more than create new growth channels. It provides a platform for sustainable expansion in much the same way that our first 51 years of operations established the foundations of Korea Zinc’s success.

Korea Zinc makes renewable energy production a priority for sustainable growth

Among the three business areas of Troika Drive, I understand that the Resource Recycling Business (circular resource business) is primarily being developed in the United States. Could you explain why the U.S. was chosen as the base for this business, as well as provide an update on its current progress and future plans?

Throughout Korea Zinc’s history, every ton of copper produced at our Onsan refinery has come from 100% recycled sources. That capability has long set us apart, but in recent years we identified a  strategic opportunity to expand this expertise in scale and scope through targeted investments.

About five years ago, we identified a clear trend: recycled copper streams, especially those recovered from electronic waste, were delivering some of the highest margins within our system. The logic was simple. If e-waste can yield high-value copper at this scale and quality, then securing more of it could strengthen both our economics and our supply security. We began by focusing on ways to collect more e-waste for Onsan, but that scope quickly broadened. The infrastructure, logistics, and technical expertise required for e-waste could also handle other valuable waste streams, end-of-life batteries, solar panels, and a wide spectrum of base and precious metal scrap.

This strategic shift led to the establishment of PedalPoint, our North American platform designed to control the entire journey from collection to refining. It is not a single facility, but an integrated network of four coordinated businesses: electronics recycling, lithium-ion battery pre-processing in four U.S. cities, a logistics and trading platform for ferrous and non-ferrous scrap, and IT asset disposition for data centers and corporations. Together, they take in fragmented, inconsistent scrap flows and transform them into uniform, refinery-ready material. All collection occurs domestically in the U.S., with full traceability from origin. From there, the material is shipped to our Onsan refinery in Korea, where it is converted into LME-grade copper cathode and high-value by-products such as gold, silver, and palladium. This structure ensures compliance with U.S. policy frameworks such as the Inflation Reduction Act, while giving us direct control over both the product quality and the economics of the process.

By the early 2030s, PedalPoint is expected to supply more than 150,000 tons of copper-bearing material annually to our refining system. And, our circular resources platform is projected to process 230,000 tons of e-waste, 320,000 tons of solar panels, and 60,000 tons of used batteries each year, generating approximately USD 4.6 billion in revenue.

The key point is that this initiative is not a traditional recycling program. It represents the deliberate expansion of a core capability Korea Zinc has mastered for decades refining 100% recycled copper, into a broader platform that can capture value from a much wider range of waste. By taking in discarded electronics, we recover copper, gold, silver, palladium, and other valuable metals that would otherwise be lost. From retired solar panels, we extract high-purity silver and recover glass and aluminum for reuse. End-of-life batteries yield cobalt, nickel, lithium, and copper, all refined to battery-grade standards.

Even mixed industrial scrap is processed into uniform, auditable inputs for our system. This approach replaces the need to mine equivalent volumes of raw material, cutting environmental impact while insulating us from the price swings and supply risks tied to mining operations. It also ensures that the metals we deliver to customers, whether for wiring, electronics, or energy storage, have a documented origin and meet stringent sustainability criteria.

In essence, our growth strategy centers on expanding the range of high-value feedstocks we can process, while concurrently ensuring the long-term supply of critical materials essential to the industries that rely on them.

The U.S. is pushing to reshore critical mineral processing and reduce reliance on China. Do you see Korea Zinc expanding into the U.S. or Europe?

Six months ago, I would have said “no”, building and operating in the U.S. is costly and complex. But there is now a clear need for non-Chinese processing facilities in the U.S., which is not only a serious economic and supply chain vulnerability but also a concern for national security. Korea Zinc is one of the very few, select companies in the world which can provide solutions to this problem.

We are actively reviewing opportunities in a variety of critical minerals areas where we have proven, China-free capabilities and global competitiveness. Profitability will depend heavily on U.S. government support, but strategically, there is a strong case for establishing such facilities.

Korea Zinc and Lockheed Martin signed an MOU to cooperate on germanium supply and critical mineral supply chains

You’ve been modest in describing your activities, but it sounds as though Korea Zinc has been laying significant groundwork for the future.

Yes, we have been very busy for the last several years, and we have laid a good foundation for the future of this company. You could say we’ve planted many strategic seeds, and over the next five to ten years, I believe they will grow into meaningful results. I look forward to revisiting this conversation in two years to reflect on the progress we've made.

What would you like readers to understand about Korea Zinc and your leadership?

Korea Zinc is a special company, though admittedly, it may appear mundane, just another metals refiner, at first glance. When I was still an undergraduate student in the early 1990s, my father advised me against joining the family business. He viewed zinc smelting as a mature and unglamorous industry with limited future potential. I initially pursued other opportunities but ultimately chose to return, a decision I’ve never regretted. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate the critical role our industry plays in the global economy and the immense potential it holds for innovation and sustainable growth.

Today, the geopolitical shifts we’re seeing have made what we do more relevant, and perhaps more valuable, than ever. It’s not just about having plants in Korea that produce critical metals like germanium and antimony. It’s about having decades of operational experience, global sourcing networks, and the ability to market into volatile global markets in real time.

This positions us to contribute meaningfully to solving some of the most pressing supply chain challenges the world faces, and that also means significant opportunity for Korea Zinc, if we have the chops to rise to the occasion. 

For more details, explore their website at https://www.koreazinc.co.kr/en/