Hoa Phat Group, the leading Vietnamese steel producer, has announced construction steel sales of 258,500 mt for May, up 14.3 percent from the same month last year, but down 4.3 percent from April. Though overall steel demand in Vietnam has posted some decline in May due to the pandemic, the company’s sales in the south of the country have reached 80,650 mt, nearly three times higher than a year ago and 44 percent above volume in April this year.
In the January-May period of this year, Hoa Phat exported 596,000 mt of steel billet, of which more than 300,000 mt or 53 percent was accounted for by sales to China. The rest of the volumes were shipped to Taiwan, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. However, compared to April, shipments of billets abroad slowed down in May. In April, they totalled 183,000 mt, while in May billet exports were just slightly above 100,000 mt. Despite the reduction, the billet sales volumes are at a much higher level than last year and the company will post stable export shipments in the coming months as orders books are full for the months ahead.
Hoa Phat’s exports of finished steel totaled 160,000 mt in the January-May period, up by more than 50 percent compared to the same period last year. The major markets were Japan, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia.
