Posted on 19 May 2025
There has been no impact on Vietnam's hot rolled coil market after a local mill was forced to idle a blast furnace following an incident, Kallanish notes.
Reportedly, a fire occurred at Hoa Phat Dung Quat’s complex on 8 May. While the company has informed the market that repairs will take 1-2 weeks to complete, Vietnamese market participants disagreed with this timeline. The fire was reportedly caused by a leakage at the bottom of the blast furnace, but this has not been confirmed.
A Hanoi trader said there was differing accounts regarding the scale of the “minor” accident. He was unsure how long the blast furnace could remain closed but “heard from some people at the site that it will take quite long,” suggesting months, not weeks.
Another Hanoi trader thinks that it will take a few weeks at the least for the repairs and another few weeks to stabilise the blast furnace operations. Hoa Phat has not adjusted its HRC prices so far. “If they increase now, they cannot sell for sure,” he says. The suspension "is bad for them but not bad considering it is a weak market," he adds.
The loss of hot metal output is estimated at around 3,000t/day or 100,000t monthly from the 1.2 million tonne/year, 1,080 cubic metre blast furnace, industry sources say.
"Production loss could likely be 150,000-200,000t or much more if they have to rebuild the furnace completely," another Hanoi-based trader says.
Such a loss would impact the Vietnamese HRC market "with time," he says. Hoa Phat is heard to have ordered 30,000t of Indonesian slab early last week soon after the accident.
Four other blast furnaces remain operating at Dung Quat. The company is currently building a larger blast furnace of 2.8mt/y capacity which is targeted to be operating by year-end.
Hoa Phat did not respond when approached by Kallanish for comment.
Meanwhile, the import market for HRC in Vietnam remains quiet. An offer for Japanese SAE 1006 HRC was heard at $500/tonne cfr while buyers are bidding below this level. A position cargo for Malaysian-origin SAE 1006/SS400 HRC was heard at $495/t cfr.
“There is no improvement, the market is still weak,” a trader notes.
Kallanish assessed SAE grade 2-2.7mm thickness HRC at $495-500/t cfr Vietnam, unchanged from last week.
Source:Kallanish
