Vinacomin: Fostering Business, Investment Cooperation

Vinacomin had to minimise the negative impacts on production caused by power shortage and heavy rainfall to reach such a high output. To mitigate the effects of power cuts, the group has shifted its focus to open-cast mines away from coal pits. Coal extraction in open-cast mines is less electricity-dependent. Vinacomin has also shifted to using machines and equipment that run on oil instead of electricity.

 

Vinacomin is considering developing its own power grid in the Quang Ninh coal mining area to ensure the safety of production now troubled by regular electricity cuts.

Vinacomin has imported brown coal from Australia and is considering buying coal from Indonesia and Russia for thermo-power plants. Last year, Cambodia’s local company Mong Reththy Group and Vietnam's state mining company Vinacomin have launched a US$5-million building material company in Preah Sihanouk province called Vinacomin-Reththy.

 

Australia’s Environmental Clean Technologies (ETC) has signed a multi-million dollar trade and investment deal with Vietnam’s coal companies to export processed brown coal to Vietnam.

According to the Melbourne-based technology company, the deal enables to export 2 million tonnes of Coldry pellets a year from early 2014, expanding up to 20 million tonnes a year in its first decade of operations.

 

Under the agreement, Autralia will provide a license for its technology to enable brown coal to be transformed into environmentally cleaner black coal equivalent pellets. ECT and its Vietnamese partner plan to build a processing plant in the Australian state of Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. The Coldry plant is expected to be fully operational by late 2013 or early 2014.

 

The deal as part of a visit to Australia by Vietnam’s Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc to co-chair the 9th Australia-Vietnam Joint Trade and Economic Co-operation Committee (JTECC) with Australia’s Trade Minister Simon Crean in Melbourne.