By chance, I visited the ship building factory of Duc Minh Joint Stock Company when Director Hoang Cao Yen, the ship owner and workers were holding the launching ceremony for the 2,200 tonnes loading ship Ngoc Minh 27.
In 1988, leaving his poor home town, Hoang Hoa, Thanh Hoa province, Hoang Cao Yen became a student of Shipping University in Hai Phong city with the desire for a prosperous life.
Since then, the love and passion for the soldering firelight and ship frame stuck to him unconsciously. After graduating from the university, he worked for a shipbuilding company in the city and then went to Singapore for further education. After 18 months in this island country, Hoang Cao Yen saw the scene in which they made big ships with loads of thousands tonnes.
Returning to the country, Hoang Cao Yen took part in a shipbuilding project of Singapore in Vung Tau and determined to carry out his cherished passion. In 2002, coming back to Hai phong, he created a small worker team, joined in projects of new building and repairing ships for transport and ship building companies in Hai Phong, Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, etc. Many of his partners believed in his competence and encouraged him: “if you establish your own company, we will give our order to you”
“Getting married and building a house”, Hoang Cao Yen already made both these important tasks. In 2005, he got married and in June 2006 he established Duc Minh Joint Stock Company. Recalling about those days, he told: “I had VND20 million, gave my wife VND2 million, and I spent all the rest on business registration and paid for my workers.”
Duc Minh JSC started its production with a lack of space and capital, but he was still determined to manage a successful company. His two-pronged strategy was to encourage his workers to work diligently and with pride, and to hire space and equipments from unprofitable state owned companies. Difficulties created intelligence; the company overcame its first challenges.
After establishment, Duc Minh received many repairing contracts for TKV company (Quang Ninh coal transport company) and other orders create benefit of billions dong each year. In the same year, the company made a contract of increasing the loading capacity of a ship from 800 tonnes to 1200 tonnes. After several hard working months, Hoang Cao Yen burst into happy tears when the ship was successfully launched. All his effort bore fruits. Now, Duc Minh Company owned a loan of some billions of dong, a working staff up to 400 people with the equipments to build 7 or 8 ships with loading capacity of around three thousand tonnes.
The Company has been known by many western partners, the prestige of company has been gradually strengthened. But the manager is still concerned: “the Company has enough competence to build ships with over 10 000 tonne loads for western customers but I am still worried about working space.” We know that the city has given him a hand in solving this problem. With these efforts, we can believe that in a near future, there will be thousands tonne loading ships made by Duc Minh JSC sailing big oceans.
Phan Quang
Vietnamese
