Vietnam's Hoa Phat eyes first HRC production in Sep

          Vietnam's Hoa Phat expects to start commercial production at its new hot-rolled coil mill at its Dung Quat plant in Quan Ngai province in September, following trial runs in August, the steelmaker said.

          With the startup of HRC production, Hoa Phat expects HRC production to total about 500,000 mt in 2020, or about 14.3% of the mill's capacity of 3.5 million mt/year.

          The HRC mill was due to begin operations on April 1 but that was delayed as the coronavirus pandemic prevented engineers from Italy-based Danieli Group from travelling to Vietnam to ensure a smooth startup.

          Together with its HRC projections, the steelmaker reiterated its plans to produce 3.6 million mt of steel and 800,000 mt of billet in 2020.

          In 2019, Hoa Phat produced and sold 2.78 million mt of steel, all for the domestic construction sector, up 16.8% year on year.

          Commenting on the coronavirus pandemic, Hoa Phat's chairman Tran Dinh Long said the steel industry will be "less affected...[as] there will be a lot of public investment in post-reconstruction."

          Vietnam plans to spend Dong 700,000 billion ($30 billion) on public projects such as bridges and roads, "so steel consumption will be relatively good," Hoa Phat said.

          Hoa Phat said that in 2021, when the four blast furnaces of its Dung Quat project come into operation, the steelmaker will have a crude steel production capacity of 8 million mt/year and will become the leading steelmaker in Vietnam.

          Each blast furnace has a 1,080 cu m capacity and can produce 1.2 million mt/year of hot metal. The first two blast furnaces fired up in June and November 2019, respectively.

          The company's crude steel production plans had included firing up its third blast furnace in May but that was also subject to market conditions. The delay initially from April was due to parts and engineer disruptions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

          Once all four blast furnaces come online, Hoa Phat will need to import 12 million-13 million mt/year of ore annually, the company said.

-- Clement Choo, Samuel Chin