Vietnam-based steelmaker Hoa Phat Group is going to start commercial production of HRC in September this year, according to the official statement of the company, and the planned production for sale will be 500,000 mt of coils this year. Moreover, total production of billet for sale (the major part of the volume is for the export market) will reach 800,000 mt.
The launch of commercial production of HRC will depend on foreign technical experts, the company confirms. The total annual HRC production of Hoa Phat is expected at up to 2 million mt after completion of the second phase of Dung Quat project. Hoa Phat will be the second HRC producer in Vietnam after Formosa Ha Tinh, but even till 2025 the country will still depend heavily on imported coils as domestic production will be nor enough.
In 2020, Hoa Phat plans to produce 3.6 million mt of construction steel, 29 percent above the result of 2019. HRC output will be 500,000 mt or 125,000 mt on average per month over the last four months of the year. Billet production will be 800,000 mt in 2020, according to the company. It means that the company is not excluding the slowdown of exports in the second half of the year after sharp increase in the beginning of the year. As SteelOrbis reported earlier, total billet sales for both domestic and export markets reached over 530,000 mt for the first four months of the year. According to the Hoa Phat Group Chairman Tran Dinh Long, “Exports [of billets] to China is the best solution for the competitiveness of Hoa Phat Steel... However, we assert that Hoa Phat's main market is domestic, not export.”
Assessing the impact of covid-19, the steel industry is expected not to be affected much and the construction will be boosted by investments.
In 2021, when all four blast furnaces of Hoa Phat Dung Quat project (two of them have been launched in 2019) come into stable operation, Hoa Phat's crude steel output will reach 8 million mt per year. As a result, the consumption of imported iron ore will be 12-13 million mt.