Vietnam Ferromanganese Plant Hit By Delay

Delay In Site Choice Halts FeMn Project

Plans to build a $10.8 million ferromanganese plant in the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Vietnam’s Ha Tinh province have been hit by a delay in choosing a site for the plant.

Vietnam’s Manganese Mineral Joint Stock Company and the Taiwanese-backed Chinese company Stanco International Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding on establishing the joint venture in December 2009, however despite working with the Vung Ang zone authority to find a suitable site for the project the partners have not been back to the area for two months.

“The locations they temporarily chose have already been given to other investors, who are quickly expediting the construction of their projects,” said the authority’s Thaii Van Hoa, who is also director of the Ha Tinh Investment Promotion Centre.

“The slowness of this project could mean they [the firms] may not have an opportunity to do business here,” Mr Hoa said. Manganese Mineral director Nguyen Dinh Lan said that the two companies were designing the project and its environmental protection report.

“It is expected that the designing will be completed soon and will be licenced and constructed within this year. The province’s authorities said they wholly supported this joint venture,” Mr Lan said. However Mr Hoa responded that the authority cannot wait too long for the ferromanganese project to commence as other investors are keen to move into the zone.

“At present, most of the zone’s land has already been filled with many projects,” he said.

On completion the plant will manufacture more than 50,000 tonnes a year of ferromanganese per year, which would eventually be supplied for steel-making projects within the zone. However, much of the initial output will be sold to other steelmaking companies in Vietnam as the Vung Ang steelmaking projects have yet to be completed.

The Vung Ang ferromanganese project will use raw materials from Ha Tinh’s manganese ore mines and is the latest steel-related project to be given the go-ahead in Vietnam.

On Friday, Japan’s Kobe Steel announced that it would build a $1 billion iron ore nugget plant in the northern province of Nghe And. In November 2009, the Cao Bang Manganese Joint Stock Company in northern Vietnam signed a $1.72 million deal with a Chinese company to build a ferromanganese manufacturing factory in Cao Bang province’s Hoa An district; and in October, 2009, Thai Nguyen province announced the construction of a $15.13 million ferromanganese and siliconemanganese manufacturing factory in the Song Cong Industrial Park, expected to come online by late 2010.