Quynh Lam was previously a pristine wetland in Hoa Binh, but it has undergone a complete makeover. I still felt its widely known tranquillity when I was asking the way to Quynh Lam Brick Tile Joint Stock Company - an known concern here. It took me by surprise that when I stepped past the main gate, I still felt the peace and quiet rather than noise of machines or pall of smoke as I had thought about brick factories in Vietnam. Indeed, Quynh Lam Brick Tile Joint Stock Company holds many surprises for everyone, thanks to its innovative creativity.
The forerunner of the company was a team of 20 brick makers founded in 1959. Initially, the company primarily relied on manual labour and rudimentary tools and productivity was thus not very high. Mr Pham Ngoc Chuyen, President and Director of Quynh Lam Brick Tile Joint Stock Company, said: "The company made landslide breakthroughs in the 1980s and 1990s, when Hoa Binh province was a vast construction site where the construction of hydropower plants was going on. The company installed Chinese brick production lines to meet the local demand. Since then, productivity enhanced and product quality was guaranteed. The company became a trusted supplier of bricks and tiles for civil construction, housing projects in the province.”
In response to State-owned enterprise transformation policy, the company was the first production unit to go public in April 1999 on a trial basis and was the most successful at that time.
In 2002, with the support from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Hoa Binh Department of Science and Technology, Quynh Lam Brick Tile Joint Stock Company applied the combined brick burning technology coded VIE/000/04 from the Global Environment Facility. This VND3 billion technology improved the quality of products, reduced input costs by 30 percent, limited environmental pollution, and bettered working environment for employees. Not only that, the company always conducted scientific research to upgrade production technologies. In 2005, the research project entitled "Improving high-performance vertical brick firing technology” carried out with the Science - Technology Institute under the Hanoi University of Technology and led by Director Chuyen helped reduce 98 percent of CO2 gas emissions in brick production. The initial investment value for this technology equalled just 20 percent of similar old technologies used to fire tunnel bricks. The technology replaced traditional electricity-powered firing technique. Previously, manufacturing 10 million bricks needed 2,200 tonnes of coal and 500 tonnes of logs, but the amount of coal needed at present is just 800 tonnes.
Thus far, hundreds of delegations from many provinces and cities have visited the company to learn from its experience and technology. Since 2005, the company has transferred technology and equipment to nearly 30 domestic production facilities and two establishments in Laos.
With what it has achieved, the company has been awarded a lot of certificates of merit and noble medals by the Government and associations. Its bricks were voted the Vietnamese High Quality Goods Award for three consecutive years from 2003 to 2005. The company was also presented the Third Grade Labour Order in 2003, Emulation Flags by the Government and Vietnam General Confederation of Labour in 2006, and Flags of Outstanding Business by the Hoa Binh People’s Committee from 2004 to 2010. In 2007, the State conferred the Second Grade Labour Order to the Company and the Third Grade Labour Order to Director Pham Ngoc Chuyen. In 2008, it won the Thanh Giong Cup.
Nowadays, new buildings are rising in Hoa Binh province and many are made from bricks and tiles of Quynh Lam Brick Tile Joint Stock Company.
Vietnamese
