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Company has completed three major overseas orders with more on the way
December 01, 2009
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DUNG QUAT, Vietnam - At the remote Dung Quat Economic Zone, which lies within a two-hour drive of Da Nang, Vietnam’s fourth largest city, the factories inside Doosan Heavy Industries Vietnam (Doosan Vina) were making quite a racket next to the serene rivers and modest-looking residential houses in the countryside. Despite the early morning calm blanketing the rest of the town, groups of Vietnamese employees there wearing white Doosan hard hats were moving power equipment from one plant to the next. At first glance, Doosan and Dung Quat don’t seem to mix but the company has been actively trying to integrate itself into its foreign surroundings. With the goals of increasing their production capacity and heightening their global presence, Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Co., Korea’s leading power equipment maker, launched their Vietnamese subsidiary Doosan Vina this year, investing around $300 million. The 110-hectare (272-acre) area, completed this May, includes five main factories to produce equipment for thermal power, desalination equipment, material handling equipment, chemical petroleum equipment and heater recovery steam generators. The company has 1,500 local employees, including 100 technicians/engineers who were trained at Doosan Vita’s own employee training center. The center first trained 30 locals in an intensive eight-week program and then placed them in on-the-job assignments alongside Korean technicians for over a year.
Since its completion, the subsidiary has been completing one big order after another. Just last month, Doosan Vina shipped its first desalination plant to the United Arab Emirates. The plant, which weighs 4,000 tons and stands at 10.6 meters (34.8 feet) tall, is able to produce 450,000 liters (118,900 gallons) of fresh water a day out of the seawater it processes. “I still can’t forget the day we shipped our desalination plant, the size of a football stadium, to the U.A.E. - that we were able to make something that requires such cutting-edge technology,” said Nguyen Tien Hieu, a supervisor at Doosan Vina’s desalination plant. It was the second shipment for Doosan Vina, following this September’s shipment of two power plants to Pecem and Itaqui in Brazil. The two power plans have a combined capacity to generate 1,440 megawatts of power.
Vietnam’s speedy economic growth, at around 8 percent a year, has raised the country’s power demand by 15 to 16 percent annually in recent years. “Most foreign companies [starting businesses in Vietnam] get an initial operating license of 50 years on average. Doosan Vina received a 70-year license,” Cho Bong-jin, the general director of Doosan Vina, said at the company office yesterday. The company has high goals for the future, and it is predicting 17 trillion won ($14.7 billion) in revenue by 2015. “By 2015, Doosan Vina is aiming for $700 million in production and we hope to employ over 3,000 locals to grow the company into a leading firm to represent Vietnam,” said Park Gee-won, president of Doosan Heavy Industries. By Cho Jae-eun [jainnie@joongang.co.kr] |
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