After their top-level managers had a face-to-face talk for the first time, Taiwan’s China Steel Corp. and Korea’s POSCO, both the largest steelmakers their own country by output, will reinforce mutual cooperation on exploring overseas material supply and new products.

Led by the chairman Chung Joon-yang, a group of POSCO’s high-level executives came to Taiwan to meet China Steel’s chairman Tsou Juo-chi, president Andrew Sung and other directors earlier. Insiders familiar with the face-to-face meeting confirmed that the both parties underwent talks over further cooperation on the said issues.

In fact, the cooperation between China Steel and POSCO has just begun since the latter helped the former acquire a 2.5% stake indirectly in the Roy Hill, an iron ore mining project in Australia, this April, which sets a positive tone for both sides to build closer partnership in the short term.

Presently, 70% of the Roy Hill’s ownership is commanded by the local steelmaker Hancock Steel & Fabricating, 12.5% by POSCO, and 2.5% by Korea’s STX, a holding company, and China Steel each.

At the face-to-face meeting with China Steel’s executives, POSCO’s Chung reportedly indicated that his company will try to join hands with the Taiwanese partner on exploring new sources of raw material supply, exchanging technologies and developing new steel products in the future.

Closer partnership with POSCO will be certainly helpful to China Steel in driving its business growth. The Taiwanese steelmaker raked in revenues of NT$240.37 billion and net profits of NT$19.493 billion in sales revenue and net profits, respectively, in 2011, compared to POSCO’s sales revenue of over KRW39 trillion (about NT$1.02 trillion) and net profits of KRW3.27 trillion (around NT$85.4 billion) for the same year.