Posted on 02 Jan 2023
The Vietnamese long products market is improving, Kallanish notes. Domestic producer Hoa Phat Group will be restarting one of its blast furnaces at Hoa Phat Hai Duong to boost its output of rebar. The restart means the group will raise its rebar capacity by 700,000 tonnes/year.
The blast furnace was blown in on 27 December and will take around seven days to start producing billet, market sources say. Two of the steelworks' three blast furnaces were suspended last November. Hai Duong has an installed 2.2 million t/y capacity of construction long products.
The group’s other major steel plant, Hoa Phat Dung Quat, will still face a shortage of billet. Dung Quat closed two of its blast furnaces in November and another furnace in December, leaving only one furnace running. The plant will thus either source billet from the Hai Duong plant or from other domestic mills in Vietnam. The Dung Quat steelworks has a finished steel capacity of 5.6m t/year, comprising 3mt of hot rolled coil and 2.6mt of construction longs.
Hoa Phat’s five non-productive furnaces were not shut down fully but maintained at the lowest optimal temperature over the last 1-2 months, so that the furnaces could be revived in a much shorter time. The group plans to similarly restart the operations of other blast furnaces depending on the market situation and demand.
Source:Kallanish
