South Korea’s Posco is considering taking a minority stake in a Chinese steelmaker as it accelerates overseas expansion plans and seeks to become the world’s third-largest steelmaker.

Advancing into China, the world’s biggest steel market, was “inevitable”, said Lee Dong-hee, Posco’s chief financial officer. The steelmaker aims to expand its annual global production capacity by about 60 per cent to 50m tonnes by 2011.