In a ceremony on June 29, POSCO dedicated a plant to produce steel rods and sections in Vietnam at the No. 2 Pumi Industrial Complex in Vung Tau Province. A slew of both Korean and local dignitaries attended, led by Consul-General Park No-wan in Ho Chi Minh City and Truong Thanh Hoal, chief of the Trading Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Vietnam, and officials of vendors and related cooperative firms.
The steel plant built by POSCO-SS Vina has an annual capacity to produce steel products totaling 1 million tons, including medium- to large-size steel sections and steel wire rods. It has secured a bridgehead for POSCO to market its steel products not only in Vietnam but also to Southeast Asian countries, and also connect its marketing activities with VPS, another POSCO steel plant in north Vietnam that produces steel rods, and steel wire rods to create synergy.
The new steel plant is slated to help the Vietnamese economy by importing substitute steel sections to be used as construction material. The new steel plant is also expected to help the shipbuilding firms not only in Vietnam but also around the world by producing steel boards and rod-shaped steel sections.
POSCO SS Vina will turn out various steel products including H steel sections, angles and channels, particularly inverted angles, cutting them in various lengths from 6 to 24 meters to satisfy customers’ various needs.
In his congratulatory speech at the ceremony, President Kim Jin-il of POSCO SS-Vina said the company hopes it will be able to make a huge contribution to the Vietnamese economy by helping the development of its infrastructure, creation of jobs, improvement of the trade balance, so they can grow together with Vietnamese customers and become a company loved by the people.
Consul-General Park said in his speech that he hopes POSCO SS Vina would be of a great help to Vietnam when its superior steelmaking technologies can harmonize with creativity and the hard working habits of Vietnamese people and become the top steel company in the world.
In recent years, the construction markets in Southeast Asian nations have been booming under their government policies to create jobs by boosting investments in such key infrastructure as airports, highways, subways and power plants.
The Vietnamese construction market grew to $8.6 billion in 2012 from $5.7 billion in 2008, growing more than 50 percent per year in the last four years on average.
The demand for steel rods and sections — the key steel products for the construction industry — have grown more than 10 percent per year in recent years in Vietnam, but the country did not have a steel plant for steel sections and instead relied on imports of those steel products thus far.
President Kim met with Truong Thanh Hoal, chief of the Trading Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam before the ceremony and asked for continuous support for the POSCO SS Vina from the Vietnamese government.
POSCO’s cold-rolled steel sheet plant in Vietnam is the largest in Southeast Asia. With the completion of the plant, POSCO has established a firm steel manufacturing and sales base to cover many countries in Southeast Asia.
POSCO will receive hot-rolled steel materials necessary for the Vietnam cold-rolled steel factory from the Pohang and Gwangyang Steelworks as well as Nippon Steel Corp. The high-quality cold-rolled steel products manufactured in the factory will be supplied to the whole of the Southeast Asian region through steel processing centers in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
POSCO opened the 1.2 million-ton capacity cold-rolled steel factory in the Pumi Industrial Complex of Vung Tau Province, near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s economic center, with approximately 500 personnel in attendance including Chairman Chung Joon-yang, Minister Vu Huy Hoang of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and other major Vietnamese figures, as well as Consul General Kim Sang-yun of Ho Chi Minh City.
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