The fibre plant is one of the 12 loss-making projects under the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The re-opening of the plant is in line with the government’s directive to tackle shortcomings and weaknesses of some inefficient and loss-making projects and enterprises.

Dao Van Ngoc, PVTex chairman, said after adjusting and evaluating the quality of the yarn, PVTex would officially operate three yarn spinning lines with the support of Germany’s Bamag experts, which provides copyrights for yarn manufacturing equipment.

The plant had a test run on April 10.

PVTex’s yarns will be tailor-made to suit the market and meet physical requirements, such as thinness, fabric elongation and elastic force. Some initial experiments at the plant’s laboratory showed that PVTex’s products met the quality obligation.

PVTex, a subsidiary of PetroVietnam with a total investment capital of US$325 million, started commercial operations in May 2014, with a capacity of 236 tonnes of fibre per day, reaching 48 per cent of the designed capacity.

The plant halted operations in September 2015 owing to a huge loss of VND1.26 trillion ($55.3 million) and negative equity of VND504 billion.

It was scheduled to restart in 2016 but failed to do so and remained closed. The competent authority would have considered bankruptcy of the factory if the equitisation or divestiture of the enterprise were unsuccessful. 
N.Nga