The Viglacera Ha Long Joint Stock Company, a unit under the
Vietnam Glass and Ceramic for Construction Corporation (Viglacera) that was formerly
put under the management of the Ministry of Construction, now the Vietnam
Housing and Urban Development Group, was grown from the Ha Long Brick Factory which
was established in 1978 and employed Poland-backed ring-furnace technology.
In the initial period, the laborers had to work in poor
conditions with low labor efficiency. The production was monotonous. From 1995,
with direct guidance from Viglacera and strong determination by the management,
the company overcame a mountain of difficulties, and more importantly it made
constant efforts to improve technology, save energy and natural resources, make
in-depth investment into production striving for a sustainable development.
The Ha Long Brick Factory had to halt production in 1995 due to using the outmoded ring-furnace technology. The company shifted into running the Tieu Giao Brick Factory that employed Bulgaria-backed tunnel kiln technology with improved production conditions and product quality. However, brick items still had low quality grade. The company then decided to demolish the Ha Long Brick Factory and invested in a new one with a cutting-edge technology that would allow it to turn out top-grade facing tiles.
The first production line at the Gieng Day Cotto Brick
Factory was put into operation in October 2002 with a capacity of one million
square meters of tiles per year employing a state-of-the art technology
provided by Sacmi Group (
To make the most of the high quality clay deposit in Quang
Ninh, in 2006 and 2007 the company removed the two production lines from the
Binh Duong brick factory to the Gieng Day Cotto Brick Factory to raise the
production to a total four million square meters a year.
The company general director Nguyen Quang Mau said that
since the inception the company paid due heed to technical innovations. At the
Gieng Day Cotto Brick Factory the company had applied a number of initiatives
based on the Sacmi technology.
Accordingly, to slash half of the fuel expense
the company used Chinese coal gasifier technology in baking bricks instead of
using gas. The gas emissions were procured to dry raw bricks instead of heating
the four-tier drying oven, saving one third of the coal volume. (The initiative
won the first prize at the tenth National Scientific and Technical Competition in
2010). Similarly, the baking oven was extended and the drying-baking process
was shortened to better the productivity and product quality.
At the Tieu Giao and Hoanh Bo brick factories, technical
initiatives were used to improve baking and burning process such as using FO oil
instead of coal dust at tunnel kilns, procuring tunnel kiln gas emissions,
mechanizing product transport and improving ventilation system. These all have
resulted in higher labor and machine efficiency, reduced fuel consumption and
stabilized product quality.
Besides technical innovations, the company has enriched clay
sources at factories to ensure stable production. It bought clay from site
clearance projects to increase material reserves for factories. At clay
deposits, before extraction the company made efforts to survey the clay
capacity, analyze samples, work out optical extraction plans, in the meantime
effectively oversee extraction, transport and product classification right at
the material site.
To save natural resources, the company has improved product designs to lower the material volume while still ensuring quality and usability (producing coconut-leaf tiles weighing 1.6kg instead of 2kg/piece by creating a ditch in the tile; lowering the floor tile weight from 3kg to 2.5kg etc.). Steps were taken to make the most of substandard bricks which were then grinded into a kind of powder to serve as a production material.
The company is the first business among Vietnamese
terracotta producers applying internationally recognized quality management
system following ISO 9001:2000 standards. In the past couples of years, the
company has paid particular attention to creating a fresh working environment
and protecting the environment at production factories. At these factories,
alongside procuring baking oven gas emissions and putting into use the coal
gasifier technology FO oil is used in baking bricks with a view to reducing gas
emissions to the environment.
Besides, due attention was paid to preserving green trees and natural landscapes in areas surrounding the company head office and production factories. In the meantime, to reduce haze and dust in the unloading process the company has invested in a water spray system at wagon lanes. Similarly, the company has created a waste tank system, used waste oil to maintain wagon wheels, built worker housings, grown vegetables or contained rain-water in areas that were formerly clay deposits.
These synchronous solutions brought in practical results.
The product price was reduced from VND2,000 to VND13,500/kg. Significantly, 2009
revenue amounted to VND1 trillion and per laborer average income was around
VND4.2 million per month.
In 2010 development plan that was approved at the stockholder conference, the company is set to achieve profits of more than VND110 billion, 53 percent more year on year and the earning-per-share (EPS) of more than VND12,200 and dividend of at least 40 percent. In 2010, Viglacera Ha Long will inject more capital into existing factories to boost production: 16 project items at the Tieu Giao Brick Factory, seven projects at the Gieng Day Cotto and nine projects at the Hoanh Bo brick factories.