Vietnam’s leading steelmakers, Pomina Steel has announced commencement of trial production at its first blast furnace. The facility will provide the company an additional 1mn mt of steel billet capacity in the coming days. Imports of ferrous scrap are likely increase as the company’s EAF operations are largely dependent on steelmaking though scrap route.
According to the company’s release to the national exchange, the trial production started on November 18. This new steelmaking expansion project is located at Ba Ria, Vung Tau region. The steelmaker has increased its billet making capacity to use it as a feedstock to produce long steel. The company aims to lift its share in the export market.
In 2019, Pomina steel upgraded its capacity to a new hybrid electrical/integrated steelmaking technology, which allowed it to improve equipment efficiency and gain savings on production costs. The Flexible Modular Furnace technology at Pomina 3 steel plant, offered more flexibility in terms of using different charge components (liquid and pig iron, HBI, steel scrap). Consteel technology has the outstanding advantage of completely removing slag and impurities, helping to clean liquid iron and being dumped from the bottom of the furnace.
Pomina’s plants which are in Binh Duong and Dong Nai province have a total annual capacity of 1.1mn mt of construction steel and 1.5mn mt of billets. The company is largely dependent on ferrous scrap imports from the Japan, the US and Australia.