Major Vietnamese steelmaker Hoa Phat Group is preparing to break into the big leagues among international steel companies via the set-up of four greenfield blast furnaces at its Hoa Phat Dung Quat steel complex in 2019.
It plans to start the first blast furnace at the complex by December this year for trials before gradually increasing run rates, a source with knowledge of the company said. It will subsequently attempt to start one blast furnace every quarter.Each blast furnace will have a volume of 1,080 cubic meters and capacity of 1.2 million tonnes per year of hot metal.The start-ups will be in two phases and will raise the capacity of the complex in the Dung Quat Economic Zone in Binh Tri, in central Vietnam's Quang Ngai province, to 4.8 million tpy by the end of 2019. They will also raise Hoa Phat's total capacity to 6.8 million tpy.This will make it the second-largest steel producer in the country after major integrated producer Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp, which has total capacity of 7 million tpy. And it will move Hao Phat into the ranks of the...