Phu My Urea - 'Friend of Farmers'

 

The building of the Phu My Nitrogenous Fertiliser Plant was started in 2001. The plant was put into operation in September 2004 with a total capital of US$370 million. The plant uses the Haldor Topsoe technology from Denmark for ammoniac production and the Snamproghetti technology from Italy for urea production. These are world-leading technologies for fertiliser production with the natural gas extracted from the Bach Ho (White Tiger) oil field as input and urea and liquefied ammoniac as outputs. In particular, the project was designed with a close circle, which can generate electricity and operate despite a failure of the national electric grid. The plant’s design capacity is 740,000 tonnes of urea per annum and 35,000 tonnes of ammoniac per year. The Phu My Nitrogenous Fertiliser Plant is a leading petrochemical work in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, whose urea and liquefied ammoniac products can compete with those imported from foreign countries.

 

The plant has so far opened four branches and nine agents to bring Phu My urea to farmers nationwide. On average, the output of the Phu My plant can meet one third of the local demand for urea and has occupied 50 per cent of market shares. Sold at reasonable prices, Phu My urea has helped stabilise the local urea market by reducing the dependence on imported urea. Between September 2004 and December 2005, the company sold around one million tonnes of urea and over 30,000 tonnes of liquefied ammoniac for industrial and agricultural production.

 

In 2005, the plant’s output reached its 88 per cent of its capacity. Its urea won six gold medals and cups for high quality in two consecutive years, 2004 and 2005, and was voted for the ‘Friend of Farmers’ trademark and as Vietnamese high quality goods. Phu My urea has been considered as a highlight of the local oil and gas industry and the Vietnamese economy as a whole. At the same time, it is a proud success of technology transfer, in which Vietnam has received modern technologies from the world for its industrialisation and modernisation.

 

Over the past number of years, the Phu My Nitrogenous Plant has built its capability, thus increasing its productivity and the quality of its products, satisfying better the demand of customers. The company is gradually building and applying the ISO 9001-2000 quality management system, the Occupational Health and Safety System, OHSAS 18000, and the ISO 14000 environmental management system. Dinh Huu Loc, director of the company, said that one of the long-term targets, contributing to the development of Vietnamese chemical industry, was to invest in diversifying products and producing basis chemical products to replace such imported products as methanol, formaldehyde, urea-formaldehyde, melamine, argon, and carbon dioxide gas. The plant would strive for an increase of its assets by ten per cent per year.