Southern hub firms enter year on a high

Tan Binh district’s Indochina Steel Company Limited got orders worth around VND1 billion ($47,600) from several strategic partners right after long Lunar New Year holidays.

The firm also set to open three new branch offices in southern Dong Nai and Binh Duong provinces and Mekong Delta’s Can Tho city shortly after Tet.

As soon as Tet holidays ended Thien Nam Elevator Joint Stock Company got an order for manufacturing 30 elevators worth VND21 billion ($1 million) from a Japanese plant operating in Vietnam, according to the company’s deputy director Nguyen Tan Vu.

Vu said Thien Nam’s early export shipment in 2012 headed Japanese market with four elevators weighing 3,500 and 4,000 kilogrames each.

“2012 would be a tough one for investors in property and related areas like us but Thien Nam will try to keep product prices stable in the first quarter amid escalating pressures from appreciating material costs,” said Vu.

Vinatexmart clothing store system’s deputy general director Tran Thanh Nhan said right after Tet the company would inaugurate a new fashion centre in Hanoi’s Ba Trieu street and one new clothing mart in Ha Dong district.

Vinatexmart aims to enlarge sales network to include 30 new stores in 2012, bringing total store number to 93 by the year’s end.

An Phong Investment Joint Stock Company, the developer of Maximark supermarket chain, planned to break ground of third Maximark supermarket in Ho Chi Minh City’s Go Vap district. Six Maximark supermarkets are currently in place, two in Ho Chi Minh City, one in Can Tho city and other three in south-central coastal province of Khanh Hoa.

A representative from Switzerland-backed cement maker Holcim Vietnam Limited unveiled the firm would pump $3.5 million into expediting electrostatic dust filtration project right in 2012’s first quarter and would make $18 million power generation plant fueled by heat from waste gas usage with an annual capacity of 44 million kWh come online in August 2012.

Some city-based garment firms are running at full capacity despite a predicted shortfall of 15 per cent in the sector’s export orders later last year.

“Right in the first week after Tet holidays our company will export several containers of 60,000 products worth $1 million and launch a new $200,000 embroidery enterprise in Binh Duong to ease dependence on export processing orders,” said Sai Gon 3 Garment Company general director Pham Xuan Hong.

Hong also said after Tet the company would recruit 200 new workers for its two new production lines to boost output.