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Plastics producers thirsty for materials
Plastics producers have asked the government, the Ministries of Natural Resources and the Environment, and Trade and Industry to reconsider the regulations on scrap imports in order to help ease the thirst for materials.
According to Pham Trung Cang, Chairman of the HCM City Plastics Association, importing scrap plastic proves to be the only way for domestic companies to reduce production costs and improve their competitiveness.
Now Vietnam has more than 2,000 plastics producers, 80% of which are located in HCM City. In 2007, plastics exports brought the turnover of $750mil, while the figure is expected to reach $1bil this year.
Cang said that domestic sources can provide just 300,000 tonnes of materials every year while currently Vietnam needs to import an additional 1.6-1.7mil tonnes of scrap material of different kinds.
The Vietnam Plastics Corporation is planning to team up with Canada’s Merlin Plastics to set up a joint venture that runs two scrap plastic treatment plants in the north and south of Vietnam.
However, construction of the two plants has not been kicked off yet after three years of planning because of the serious lack of standard input materials. The domestic scrap collection system, which remains small and disorganised, cannot meet the demand in either quantity or quality.
It is estimated that some hundreds of tonnes of scrap plastic are collected every day, while Vietnam needs around 1,000 tonnes.
Meanwhile, according to Ho Duc Lam, Secretary General of the Vietnam Plastics Association, all plastics producers are now thirsty for plastic materials because of the unsuitable regulations on the import and re-processing of scrap plastic.
Cang estimates that with the average import price of $1,800/tonne, Vietnam has to spend $2.5bil every year to import materials for local production. Meanwhile, if Vietnam imports scrap plastic, 650,000 tonnes, enough to meet 35-50% of the demand for materials, it would be able to save $780mil every year (the current average price of scrap plastic material is $600/tonne).
Cang said that scrap imports would help make input material prices decrease by 25% and production costs by 15%, which would help make Vietnam-made products more competitive with Chinese or Indian products. Clients from the US, EU and Japan always require that Vietnam-made products have at least 10% of recyclable materials to be environmentally-friendly.
However, Phan Van Thanh, Chairman of the Vietnam Plastics Association, said it is necessary to set strict requirements on imports of scrap plastic to prevent waste from being imported.
Thanh said that only the enterprises which have scrap treatment plants with modern technologies should be allowed to import scrap plastic.
The association is considering a project on building a scrap plastic treatment centre in Cu Chi district in the suburbs of HCM City and is calling for investment for the project. The treatment plant would have the capacity of 150 tonnes of scrap steel a day in the first phase of operation from 2010, and 750 tonnes a day in the second stage.
VNN
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