While many developed countries are shutting down their paper plants and relocating them to other countries, a lot of investment projects in paper production are appearing in Vietnam.
Vietnam has been trying to attract foreign investment in paper production for the last 20 years since the country opened its door to foreign direct investors. However, no investor has wanted to inject money in this sector, not including the projects on making tissue and toilet paper, though paper production was protected by the state with a high tax rates on imports.
However, everything has changed: since the protection was removed, a lot of big-scale projects on making paper and pulp have been registered.
According to the Ministry of Industry, projects to be run by foreign investors in the coming time have the capacity of around 1 million tonnes of pulp and 600,000 tonnes of paper every year.
These include the project by LEE & Man with the tentative capacity of 350,000 tonnes of paper and 150,000 tonnes of pulp, by Vina Kraft (220,000 tonnes of paper), and the project by Japanese Sojiz, which is expected to produce 600,000 tonnes of pulp a year in the Central Highlands. Moreover, there are a lot of projects of domestic investors, including the Vietnam Paper Corporation (Vinapimex), Vinh Phu Paper Company, Phu Giang Packaging Company, Binh An Company, which have the capacity of 50,000-250,000 tonnes each.
An official from Vinapimex said that investors were rushing to produce pulp and paper in Vietnam because they heard about the sharp increase in demand and prices of paper products. The pulp price has increased by 70% since 2001.
However, he said that Vietnam could attract many investors because it had profuse material sources, which makes Vietnam deserve to be the target destination for investors from countries which have given up producing paper for fear of polluting the environment.
In fact, many paper plants in Europe, North America and China have had to shut down due to environmental pollution and ineffectiveness. China, for example, will shut down a lot of paper plants which have the total capacity of up to 3mil tonnes.
In Vietnam, paper production proves to be the industry which most seriously damages the environment. The Cau River area, for example, has been seriously polluted by the paper mills there with 3,500 cu m of waste water every day being discharged into the river.
Vietnam is now using backward technologies in paper production. In order to create one tonne of finished paper, mills have to use 30-100 cu m of water, while modern mills in the world consume 7-15 cu m only for every tonne of paper.
In all cases, Vietnam will still have to develop its pulp and paper industry, as the industry will be the stable outlet for the programme on 5mil ha of forest. What Vietnam should do is to develop the paper industry while preventing environmental pollution.
The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment said that it was compiling regulations which set strict requirements on the quality of waste water from paper mills.
Moreover, according to the Vietnam Paper and Pulp Producers’ Association, it is also necessary to set requirements on technologies and equipment used in paper mills. Experts said that only the mills with the capacity of more than 100,000 tonnes a year can make appropriate investment in a waste water treatment system.
Vietnam should only permit the import of modern technologies which use a low level of water. The experts have warned that if Vietnam does not set strict requirements on imported technologies, the backward technologies once used in Europe and China will be imported and installed in Vietnam’s mills.
In fact, under the current regulations, all technologies must be examined before being imported into Vietnam. However, the regulations seem to make no sense. Investors all are required to make reports about the possible impacts of the projects on the environment and asked to have modern water treatment system. However, in fact, few investors fulfill their commitments, and the rest allow waste to go directly into rivers and pollute the environment.
Source: VNE
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