Displaying items by tag: Vietnam

Vietnam: Tata International Singapore has signed a memorandum of understanding with Vissai Cement Group to form a joint venture company in to use the port of Vinh. The deal is expected to create a distribution network for coal, according to the Press Trust of India. The company will also be responsible for Vissai Cement’s coal imports. The joint-venture is expected to benefit from the port’s location as a key gateway for trade into and out of Laos.

Vietnam: Xuan Thanh has hired Denmark’s FLSmidth to provide five onsite advisors with the purpose of optimising the production of its cement plant while minimising the production costs. The customer's 12,500t/day cement plant is located in Ha Nam, Vietnam, and is the largest cement plant in South East Asia. FLSmidth has also supplied the equipment for the cement plant since 2017.

"By implementing best practices and data from other cement plants globally, we can assist Xuan Thanh in improving their output while minimising their production costs. In other words we will enhance their productivity. This contract is a continuation of the long-standing partnership between Xuan Thanh and FLSmidth and will optimise the production of high quality cement to the local market," said Per Mejnert Kristensen, Group Executive Vice President, Cement Division of FLSmidth.

Vietnam: Vicem (Vietnam Cement Corporation) Hoang Thach Cement has ordered a type LM 59.3+3 CS vertical roller mill for the Hoang Thach cement plant in Hai Duong province. The mill has a transmission power of 6200kW and it is able to grind 250t/hr of Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) to a fineness of 3600 Blaine. Commissioning is scheduled for later in 2018.

The scope of supply also includes an external reject system, dedusting equipment, a material conveying system and multi-chamber silos with two packaging systems downstream. The system is equipped with a LOMA LF20 heater run on heavy oil, which produces around 30,000Nm³/hr of hot gas at a temperature of 450°C. In addition, Loesche is supplying the equipment for the power supply and distribution and the grinding plant control. A particular challenge of the project has been supplying new equipment for an existing plant with limited space.

Vietnam: Vietnam exported 2.9Mt of cement and clinker worth US$101.1m in January 2018, a 32.3% compared to January 2017 in volume terms and 30.3% more in value terms, according to the General Department of Vietnam Customs. Bangladesh, the Philippines, Peru, Mozambique, Malaysia and Taiwan remained the biggest importers of Vietnamese cement and clinker in the month, the department added.

At present, Vietnam has 82 cement production lines with a combined capacity of 97.6Mt/yr. The Vietnam Cement Association (VNCA) has warned that Vietnam will face a glut of 25-36Mt/yr of cement by 2020 as production completely outstrips national demand.

Vietnam: Thanh Thang Cement is spending US$35m to towards developing a third production line at its cement plant in Thanh Nghi, Ha Nam. The government has agreed the investment at the 2.3Mt/yr unit over the 2021 – 2025 period, according to the Đầu tư newspaper. A second production line at the site was inaugurated in July 2017.

Vietnam: The Vietnam Cement Industry Corporation’s (Vicem) cement sales rose by 3% year-on-year to 26.6Mt in 2017. 23.6Mt of cement and clinker were sold locally and 3Mt were exported, a drop of 3%, according to the Viet Nam News newspaper. In 2018 the state-owned cement producer plans to produce 19.7Mt of clinker, a rise of 2%, and to sell over 28Mt of cement and clinker, a rise of 4%. The company intends to focus on ‘high-efficiency’ products to reach this target.

China: Clinker imports more than quadrupled to 184,600t in the first 11 months of 2017. Data published by the Chinese Cement Association suggests that rising domestic cement prices encouraged the import market, according to Caixin Media. Most of the imports were purchased from Vietnam by companies based in Hainan, Shangdong, Zhejiang and Beijing.

Vietnam: The Vietnam Cement Industry Corporation (Vicem) has appointed Bui Hong Minh as its general director. He was previously the deputy general director of the company, according to the Viet Nam News newspaper. He replaces Tran Viet Thang who has been relieved from the role following allegations of business malpractice.

Minh, aged 46 years, has held the position of deputy general director at Vicem since 2013. Prior to that, he worked at the But Son and Ha Tien cement companies.

Last week we looked at the prospect of two new Angolan cement plants, a situation that will reportedly lead the country to being ‘self sufficient in cement.’ When we hear this phrase, very often from relatively small markets in Africa or Asia, the obvious next step invariably follows: The country in question will become a regional powerhouse for cement exports.

But try telling that to the desperate Vietnamese cement producers, swamped by chronic overcapacity and very low prices, both at home and abroad. In an effort to shift more of Vietnam’s cement mountain, this week the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) proposed big changes to its handling of cement exports. At the moment cement is subject to a 5% export tax and does not receive VAT refunds. This means that Vietnamese cement has become less competitive than Chinese, Thai, Indonesian and Japanese cement on the regional market, compounding the oversupply situation at home.

The MPI now proposes to scrap the tax and allow for VAT refunds to avoid a colossal 36-47Mt oversupply of cement by 2020. It is quite staggering that this response hasn’t been considered before. This is especially the case, given that the VICEM’s General Director Tran Viet Thang asked for the government to look at the rules back in February 2017. Indeed the Vietnam Cement Association predicted an oversupply of nearly 50Mt/yr by 2020 in January 2017.

Vietnam exported 14.7Mt of cement and clinker in 2016 according to its domestic statistics service. The country was the seventh largest exporter of cement and clinker in 2016 in value terms, with a total value of US$431.7m. China, as one might suspect, topped the list, but only at US$683.6m, around 58% more than Vietnam. Given that China’s cement capacity is around 20 times that of Vietnam, this highlights the extent to which Vietnam is trying to rely on imports.

A market-led response to this would be to close some of the cement plants down and stop commissioning any new ones. China has made some inroads into this approach and Vietnam is following suit… to some extent. That said, however, Trinh Dinh Dung, the Deputy Prime Minster, inaugurated the second production line at the Thanh Thang Cement plant on 4 July 2017 and Long Son Cement will open its second production line at Long Son in late August 2017. That new line will add nearly another 3Mt/yr of capacity to the national total just by itself. On top of this, Thai-owned Siam City Cement Vietnam opened a new ‘terminal’ in Vietnam in late June. Thailand ranked above Vietnam in the cement and clinker export list for 2016 at US$612.2m, suggesting that, contrary to the obvious implication, the port could even be used to ship out Thai exports into Vietnam!

This is not the first time we have heard about Vietnam’s massive cement surplus but it is the first time that the government appears to have registered it as needing attention. A market-led economy would simply shut the plants down but Vietnam plays by different rules. Will changing the rules on tax help it sell out its surplus? Call us in 2020…

There were two telling stories from Vietnam this week that show the level to which demand has been overestimated in the centrally-planned cement sector. Firstly, the country reported that exports in the period between January and July 2014 increased by nearly a quarter year-on-year to 13.1Mt. Secondly, the Prime Minister announced that another five cement plant projects were to be axed, following nine others that bit the dust in 2013.

All this is against a backdrop of chronic lower-than-expected domestic cement demand. When we look at the figures, it’s not hard to see that domestic consumers have had trouble consuming all the cement produced in Vietnam. The government forecast for cement production in 2015 is in the region of 75 - 76Mt. If this was spread evenly between Vietnam’s 88.8m people, each person would have to consume ~850kg of cement. That’s possible but it is quite a lot for a lower middle income economy. However, separate reports state that a 10% rise in domestic sales on 2013 levels would lead to just 60Mt of domestic cement sales in 2015. This equates to a more realistic 675kg/capita.

These figures leave a massive and increasing amount of cement for export. Read again that figure from the first seven months of 2014 – 13.1Mt – Roughly the capacity of South Africa (~12.5Mt/yr), Tunisia (12.9Mt/yr) of Colombia (12.9Mt/yr)! Also, while cement exports volumes were up by nearly a quarter, the value of those same exports rose by only 20%. This indicates a drop in export prices and represents additional pressure to halt capacity expansion.

Against a backdrop of 90Mt/yr expected capacity in 2015 and falling export prices, the latest cement project cull certainly makes sense but even in a best-case scenario the country is looking at a capacity utilisation rate of just 66 - 67%. Some cement plant project owners have even found themselves trapped by the situation. Having indebted themselves on the promise of ever-increasing cement demand, they now face the prospect of throwing good money after bad, continuing to build and operate just to service debts. This is a very unenviable position indeed. The lifting of trade restrictions within the ASEAN Community on 1 January 2015 might help export volumes, but might also also drive prices down further.

Culling new cement plant projects is one thing, but could the next step be more drastic? North of the border, China is gradually reducing its overcapacity by removing older and less efficient capacity. Perhaps Vietnam would do well to follow suit.