Dongkuk Coated Metal boosts recycled content in eco-friendly color steel by 2.5 times

Dongkuk Coated Metal, the plating and color steel specialist of Dongkuk Steel Mill Group, is pushing into the resource-circulation steel materials market with a major upgrade to its eco-friendly color steel brand, Re-Born Green Pre-coated Metal (Recycling Born Green Pre-coated Metal).

The company said Wednesday it has raised the recycled plastic content in Re-Born Green from 10 percent to 25 percent and successfully developed two new designs — "matte" and "stone" types.

Re-Born Green is a color steel product incorporating recycled waste plastic that Dongkuk Coated Metal first developed in November 2023, claiming a world first. Each ton of the product delivers the recycling equivalent of 100 500-milliliter PET bottles. Through roughly three years of research and development, the company raised the recycled material content 2.5 times over.

Beyond simply increasing raw material usage, Dongkuk Coated Metal strengthened the product's market appeal by introducing the matte and stone designs. Both replicate the texture of natural stone on steel sheet, offering a differentiated design solution for the architectural interior and exterior materials market.

Dongkuk Coated Metal says it is the only company in the world capable of achieving the same level of workability, durability and surface quality as conventional color steel products while maintaining such a high proportion of recycled plastic content.

The company plans to expand Re-Born Green applications beyond construction materials and home appliances into a broader range of industrial materials, and intends to keep building out its eco-friendly product portfolio based on a circular economy model.

"This product simultaneously delivers the eco-friendly value of recycling waste plastic and the quality and design competitiveness inherent to color steel," said Choi Woo-chan, head of Dongkuk Coated Metal's technology research institute. "We will continue developing eco-friendly materials technology to contribute to carbon neutrality and the realization of a circular economy, and lead the global eco-friendly color steel market."

Meanwhile, Dongkuk Coated Metal has been sharpening its technological edge through active research and development — including becoming the first in the industry to develop an AI-based steel surface defect detection technology, DK Surface Defect Detection (SDD), in January.