The South Korean steel producer POSCO has started construction work on its $1.13 billion-worth steel plant project in Vietnam's southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.
The project, considered to be the largest foreign direct investment in Vietnam, includes the construction of a cold rolled mill with a projected annual production capacity of 1.2 million mt and the construction of a hot rolled mill with a designed production capacity of three million mt.
POSCO plans to inaugurate the cold rolled mill by 2009, while the hot rolled mill is due to commence production in 2012. The construction of the hot rolled mill will be started upon the completion of the cold rolled mill.
The products manufactured at the two new mills will be supplied mainly to the Vietnamese domestic market and to other Southeast Asian markets.
In addition, POSCO has announced that the long deadlock regarding its $12 billion Orissa project in India is over and it scheduled to start construction work on this plant in October.
"We hope to start preparatory work at the project site from October. The government has assured us that forest diversion clearance for the project land would be given soon. Once we get this approval, the land transfer process could be restarted at the earliest," POSCO-India chairman and managing director Soung Sik Cho stated.
If everything goes according to plan, POSCO will put the first phase into operation by 2011, reaching an annual capacity of four million mt of steel.
The total projected annual capacity of the plant is 12 million metric tons.