Singapore (Platts)--28Nov2012/155 am EST/655 GMT
Vietnam's Vinacomin has commissioned this week the country's first alumina refinery, a company source said Wednesday. The 600,000 mt/year Tan Rai plant in Lam Dong province was originally scheduled to start trial runs in September, but was delayed due to power supply issues. "We've commissioned the plant on Monday and if everything runs smoothly, we should see actual output at end-December," the source said. Vinacomin plans to produce about 300,000 mt of alumina from the new refinery in 2013, and further ramp up to full capacity by 2014-2015. All of the plant's output is to be exported. Marubeni of Japan has agreed to market about 150,000 mt/year of the plant's alumina in a multi-year contract. Vinacomin also plans to ink yearly contracts with other customers, and is hoping its material will find outlets in China, Malaysia and the Middle East, another company source had said in an earlier Platts report. The alumina exports will be made via the Go Dau river port in Dong Nai province, switching after 2015 to the yet-to-be-constructed Ke Ga deepwater port in Binh Thuan province. The refinery will be backward integrated, supported by Vinacomin's local bauxite mine. The refinery's EPC contractor is Chalieco, the engineering arm of China's Chalco.--Yuencheng Mok, yuencheng_mok@platts.com --Edited by Haripriya Banerjee, haripriya_banerjee@platts.com