Vietnam's First Aluminum Plant to Have Trial Run in June

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Research by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Vietnam's first alumina refinery, which is owned by the Vietnam Coal & Mineral Industries Group (Vinamincon) (Hanoi, Vietnam), is set to begin trial operations in June.

Tran Duong Le, the director of the Lam Dong bauxite-alumina management, said that the trial run at Tan Rai alumina plant in the Lam Dong province will test the performance of the installed equipment and will see if chemical leaks identified last September have been repaired before beginning full production.

The $600 million project was originally planned to start producing 630,000 tonnes of alumina annually by February and begin exports by March, but this plan was delayed after the Lam Dong province's Department of Natural Resources and Environment found lapses in the plant's environmental safety.

Local people also lodged complaints with the authorities that fish had died in massive numbers in the lake because of the plant's wastewater. Inspectors from the department later found that chemical substances had leaked from the Tan Rai plant's drainage facility into the nearby lake used to supply water for the local tea and coffee farms.

Despite the findings, Vinamincon insisted that the company designed the plant's eight chambers to store the red sludge to prevent spills.

The Nhan Co alumina refinery in the neighboring Dak Nong province is also being developed by Vinacomin. The $700 million alumina project is designed to have an initial capacity of 600,000 tonnes of alumina, and this is planned to increase to 1.2 million tonnes per year by 2014.

The Nhan Co alumina project is still under construction and equipment installation is under way. The plant is expected to commence operations by October this year.

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