Linde expands to Vietnam

Linde expands to Vietnam

HANOI (DPA): The Munich-based chemicals giant Linde AG has been given a business license for a US$26 million joint venture industrial gas plant in Vietnam, a company official said yesterday.

"We have just obtained the license ...if everything runs well we can start to build the plant in six months," said Pham Duc Tuat, Linde's chief Vietnamese representative.

Production, which would reach 2,000 cubic metres per hour, is not expected to come on stream until 1999, he added.

Linde's joint venture partner is Vietnam Industrial Gas Company (Thanh Gas), a unit of the Vietnam Chemicals Corporation owned by the Ministry of Industry.

Linde has taken 60 percent of the project, while the Vietnamese partner has 40 percent; the legal capital is $9 million.

The plant's output - to include oxygen, nitrogen, acetylene and liquid and gaseous argon - will "be marketed in northern Vietnam where there are no industrial gas plants yet, said Tuat, who has been working on this project for two years.