South Korea’s POSCO Group will invest 53 trillion won ($42 billion) by 2026 primarily in its steel, rechargeable battery materials and hydrogen businesses, the steel giant said on Thursday.The planned investment will likely more than treble the group’s corporate value by 2030, by when it aims to become the world’s top EV battery materials supplier.Of the total spending, it will earmark 33 trillion won for domestic investments.It will be divided into 20 trillion won for transforming its steel production facilities into eco-friendly ones and producing steel for use in EV motors; 5.3 trillion won for electric vehicle battery materials and hydrogen-related facilities; 5 trillion won for building eco-friendly infrastructure; and 2.7 trillion won for venture capital investments.The investment will create 25,000 jobs in the sectors of steel, EV batteries and hydrogen by 2026, POSCO said.Ahead of the announcement, a senior executive of POSCO Holdings’ secondary battery business told The Korea Economic Daily that the group will pump 25 billion won by 2030 into EV battery materials to cope with the global trend of resource nationalism.The holding company of POSCO has chemicals, trading, construction and other units under its umbrella.By Kyung-Min Kangkkm1026@hankyung.comYeonhee Kim edited this article.