The German industrial gas specialist Messer and the Vietnamese Hoa Phat Group signed a contract to build a production unit for industrial gases in Hanoi on 25 October. Messer will invest around EUR 13 million in the largest and most modern air separator in Vietnam. The company will construct the air separator and gas liquefier on the site of the steel producer Hoa Phat Steel Stock Company Ltd. The term of the contract for supplying the air gases oxygen, nitrogen and argon is 25 years. When production begins, 16,500 standard cubic metres of oxygen per hour will flow through a pipeline into the new steel works of the Hoa Phat Group in the Hai Duong province.

In addition to the wide range of applications at Hoa Phat Steel, the liquefied or gaseous industrial gases will satisfy the demand of the industrial companies based in the so-called Hanoi-Haiphong Corridor for these invisible “production assistants”. “The industrial and economic situation in North Vietnam will be extremely dynamic in the future,” affirms Stefan Messer, owner and Managing Director of the Messer Group. “The cooperation with Hoa Phat therefore supports our strategy of investing in the growth markets of our core region.” Messer is also planning to build an air-separation plant in central Vietnam together with Shinimex, a subsidiary of Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (Vinashin), so that it can supply the shipbuilding industry and other production industries which are based there with industrial gases. “Vietnam achieves notably high growth rates, especially through the processing industry“, declares Tony Rivera, General Manager of Messer in Vietnam, „Vietnam has the fastest growing national economic behind China.“

The Messer Group is the largest privately managed industrial gas producer in the world and is based above all in Europe and Asia.Messer has been active in Vietnam for ten years and today has two companies there. Messer Vietnam Industrial Gases, with its head office in Ho Chi Minh City, is fully owned by the Messer Group GmbH, which has its corporate domicile near Frankfurt am Main. Messer Haiphong Industrial Gases in Haiphong is a joint venture with Shinimex in which Messer has a share of around two thirds.