Until 1960's, Korea had relied on imports for non-ferrous metals, which are important raw materials for steel, automobile, electronic home appliance, electricity, and construction industries. In 1970's, Korea Zinc localized production of non-ferrous metals as domestic demand increased in line with rapid economic growth. In 1980's, we doubled production capacity through capacity expansion and productivity improvement. Now, our Onsan plant is well integrated with lead refinery using state-of-art technology, QSL. Our broad experience in non-ferrous metal refining business enabled us to take over an American zinc refinery. In addition, on the back of extensive technology background, we established SMC (Sun Metals Corporation) in Australia, a fully owned subsidiary. The construction of SMC's refinery was completed with Korea Zinc's own capital and technologies. By doing so, not only is the company securing economies of scale, but it is also consolidating its presence in the global market: Korea Zinc's combined production accounts for 8% of the world zinc supply. Today, Korea Zinc becomes an emerging force around the world and will continue to do its all efforts to further strengthen its world best stance in the non-ferrous metal industry. We are the domestic market leader in every field of our businesses, particularly in zinc and lead. As of the end of 2002, Korea Zinc captures 46% of domestic zinc market and 68% of domestic lead market powered by competitive advantages in product quality and consistent technological innovation. Demand for such non-ferrous metals as zinc and lead has shown steady growth because they are important raw materials for various industries like steel, automobile, electricity and construction. In addition, the development of new applications has also contributed to constant demand growth for zinc and lead. The most popular use of zinc in Korea is galvanization of steel plate, steel pipe and steel structure. Separately, domestic demand for lead consists mainly of battery, litharge, solder and electric wire coating. Separately, Korea Zinc also produces gold, silver, palladium, platinum, copper, cadmium, sulfuric acid, and bismuth ingot, etc. Korea Zinc's high purity electronic grade sulfuric acid is mainly used as a cleansing agent for GIGA-grade semi-conductors. Onsan Refinery operates the refining facilities for both zinc and lead. The refinery adopts the zinc residue-processing technology that maximizes the recovery of valuable metals from zinc residue and changes the slag environmentally sustainable. Also constructing zinc refinery and lead refinery together in one plant has generated the synergy effects such as higher recovery ratio of valuable metals, use of various-types of raw materials, and lower waste discharge. Onsan Refinery, characterized as 'Custom Smelter', is able to process various kinds of zinc ores, successfully commercializing innovative technologies such as Direct Leaching Process, QSL process, and TSL process. Direct Leaching Process is a refining technology that directly dissolves the zinc from zinc concentrates in a special leaching process and thereby eliminating the need for traditional roasting and sulfuric acid plants. Presently, Korea Zinc is the only company that uses this process commercially in the world. QSL process is a process that produces lead bullion through oxidization and deoxidization by dissolving lead concentrate. It is zinc-refining technology that helps save energy and prevent pollution by using only one furnace instead of two. It is an excellent process in that it can process a variety of materials, and uses coal as a power of source, which is rather cheap. Zinc fuming is a process that recovers valuable metals like zinc, lead, and copper from zinc residue. This process contributes to minimizing environmental contamination by making clean slag, which has much less toxic materials than iron residue and is recycled as construction materials and/or raw material for cement. In addition, this process makes it possible to dispose the residue at the company's discretion; thus, not only it solves the lack of enough lot for pond, which is required for storage of the residue, but it also produces a lot of steam by recovering wasted heat in the process of production. The Top Submerged Lance (TSL) technology has been designed to solve the disposal problem of residues generated during the refining process, the problem that almost every refinery in the world has in common. This technology recovers valuable metals from by-products generated at the nonferrous metals refining process and turns the residue into environmentally stable insoluble slag by inserting combustible materials like coal and oxygen and causing turbulence, using Lance, which is installed in the upper parts of Smelting Furnace and Fuming Furnace. In a nutshell, this technology has a great advantage in that it processes environmentally instable matters into environmentally stable wastes and recycles them. These efforts for environment paid off as the company was awarded Environmental New Technology by the Ministry of Environment in September 2002. As mentioned above, Korea Zinc takes advantage of the world best technologies to recover the most valuable metals, discharges the least wastes and uses various materials including the recycled ones. All in all, Korea Zinc becomes and will maintain its presence as the world most competitive refinery. In 1996, Korea Zinc founded Sun Metal Corporation Pty., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Korea Zinc, in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, fulfilling stringent environmental regulations. In terms of plant location, SMC has several advantages such as the adjacency to Southeast Asian market, cheap electricity cost, skilled labor, abundant raw materials, and direct and indirect supports from Australian government. In response to the stringent environmental regulations of Australian government, SMC applies Reverse Osimosis technology to treat wastewater. With the environmentally sustainable technology, SMC re-uses over 90% of wastewater and evaporates the rest of wastewater in the pond. As a result, SMC doesn't discharge any single drop of wastewater out of the refinery. From planning and financing to construction and test operation, Korea Zinc completed SMC project with its own efforts, demonstrating its managerial and technological excellence. Located in Australia, which is the largest exporter and the second largest producer of zinc concentrates in the world, not only can SMC easily procure the concentrates, but it also secures the competitiveness in terms of transportation cost. Based on advantages mentioned above, SMC is going to become the most competitive zinc refinery.