Hoa Phat Group shipped abroad 240,000 tonnes of steel in 2018. (Photo: VNA) Quang Ngai (VNA) – Hoa Phat Group, the largest steel maker in the country, shipped abroad 240,000 tonnes of steel in 2018, up 50.97 percent against the previous year, the group said on January 7.
Hoa Phat also reported an 8 percent increase in the year to nearly 2.4 million tonnes.
Particularly, the group set new records in both domestic sales and export in October, with reckoned volume of more than 250,000 tonnes, and 40,000 tonnes, respectively.
Never before had the group received such large orders from its traditional markets (including Japan, the US, Cambodia, and Malaysia) like it did in 2018. Strongest growth was seen in Japan, with the amount of steel orders increasing 20 times to over 58,500 tonnes, followed by Cambodia (246 percent) and Malaysia (202 percent).
Cambodia was the biggest customer of Hoa Phat in 2018 with nearly 70,000 tonnes, and will continue to be a potential market for Hoa Phat steel as the neighbouring country’s steel industry has not developed yet while demand is high for construction of high-rise buildings.
The group also won the anti-dumping case filed by Australian firm One Steel Manufacturing Pty Ltd, resulting in no anti-dumping subsidies imposed on Hoa Phat steel in the Australian market.
Regarding the US market, despite a 25 percent tariff on most steel imports under the Trump administration’s Section 232, Hoa Phat managed to sell 35,600 tonnes to the market, accounting for 15 percent of the group’s total exports.
Last year, Hoa Phat steel was shipped to 14 countries across the five continents. The group said that diversity in markets helped it not depend on a single market. In 2019, the corporation will continue prioritising domestic market, and set aside 10 percent of its output for exports, targeting more markets in the Southeast Asian region.
Also, construction of the Hoa Phat Dung Quat iron and steel production complex will be accelerated so that it can be completed by the end of the year. The complex sits on a site of nearly 372.7ha, nearly 340ha of which will be earmarked for factories and around 27ha is for specialised ports with a total investment of 60 trillion VND (2.6 billion USD).
With a capacity of 4 million tonnes per year, it mostly manufactures construction and rolled steels. In the first stage, the complex will churn out 1 million tonnes of construction steel and 1 million tonnes of rolled steel. Later, two million tonnes of rolled steel will be produced during the second stage.
After being put into operation, it is expected to make an annual revenue of nearly 2 billion USD, generate jobs for 8,000 workers and contribute 4 trillion VND (173.9 million USD) to the State budget a year.-VNA
VNA
