Sydney (Platts)--19Nov2010/343 am EST/843 GMT
Vietnam has delayed completion of the country's maiden alumina refinery by about four months to June 2011, with test runs and exports now slated from July, a company source said Friday. The 600,000 mt/year plant in Lam Dong province in the country's south is being built by Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group, or Vinacomin. The state-owned company expects to operate the plant at half its production capacity for the first six months to a year of its start up. Vinacomin is hoping to ship over 50% of the plant's output to China, and is also eying outlets in the Middle East. At least one aluminium producer in Southeast Asia has said it would be wary of using Vinacomin's alumina during the plant's commissioning phase. The alumina exports will initially be shipped via Go Dau port in Dong Nai province, to be switched to another at Binh Thuan province that may be completed around 2014. The refinery's building contractor is China's Chalieco, the engineering arm of metal group Chalco. Vinacomin started construction early this year on a second alumina refinery in Dak Nong province also in the country's south. The 600,000 mt/year plant is to come online in 2012-2013. There are no immediate plans for investments in local aluminium smelters due to Vietnam's inadequate electricity supply, so Vinacomin will be exporting all of its alumina. Lam Dong and Dak Nong are about 100 kilometers apart.--Joanna Lim, joanna_lim@platts.comSimilar stories appear in Metals Week. See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products/metalsweek