Illustrative image (Source: tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn)The new shippingcontainer plant will have a designed capacity of 500,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) per year.
Globaldemand for cargo containers is on the rise as a result of growing e-commerceand foreign trade, said Nguyen Manh Tuan, Vice Chairman of the Hoa Phat Group.
“We havebeen conducting research in various fields and are confident we have the ‘firepower’to make the container manufacturing project successful and competitive with manufacturersfrom China, the world’s leading container producer,” he said.
The group’srecruiters are working against the clock to enable the construction of the plantto begin as soon as possible.
Accordingto Hoa Phat, shipping containers are made from weather-resistant and expensive SPA-Hsteel. Steel currently accounts for about 55 percent of the production cost.
InVietnam, only the Hoa Phat Dung Quat Complex has the technology to produce thistype of steel at a reasonable cost, Tuan said.
Hoa Phat hasestimated it will need to produce 1 million tonnes of Hot-Rolled Coil (HRC) steelto reach an annual capacity of half a million TEUs. The group manufacturednearly 700,000 tonnes of HRC and more than 5 million tonnes of billet and constructionsteel last year.
Its DungQuat 2 project is scheduled to be operational in early 2022. Set to manufactureHRC steel using the latest advanced technology, it has a designed capacity of 5million tonnes per year.
Though theshipping container market is growing 5 percent annually, there has been ashortage of supply. In previous years, China had produced 90 percent of theworld’s containers. The country, however, has cut output by 40 percent over thelast two years, despite growing domestic demand./.
VNA
