CISDI’s guiding hand at FHS ensured bosses and workers could happily celebrate Tet

Tet, the most popular holiday and festival in Vietnam, marks the country’s New Year and the arrival of spring.

It’s a time for family reunions, and this year and last, CISDI employees have ensured that workers and bosses at Formosa Ha Tinh Steel have been able to relax and enjoy their celebrations, safe in the knowledge that blast furnace operations were running smoothly in their absence.

 “We cannot lead a happy spring festival without your attendance here at site,” Zi Lu, the senior vice president of Formosa Ha Tinh Steel, remarked on a visit to the blast furnace earlier this year.

FHS Vietnam is the Formosa Group’s first steel venture and needed CISDI’s production and operations technical assistance team on-site to monitor and ensure the smoothness of blast furnace operations.

There have been numerous other occasions when this extra support has been given. Back in 2016, to ensure the safe and stable control on startup of blast furnace 1, CISDI organised expert teams to oversee the blow-in, equipment commissioning and construction management and was the chief co-ordinator among the end-user, the builder and the maintenance company.

CISDI teams also prepared the dedicated technical document for the startup of FHS’s twin blast furnaces and staged thorough training courses for FHS’s technicians and operators.

The success of BF1’s blow-in, and its willingness to go above and beyond for FHS, saw CISDI win the contract to supply technical assistance for BF2’s blow-in.

“Hard work pays off,” said a CISDI spokesperson. “Our experienced production and operations assistance team went on to facilitate BF2’s successful blow-in. The furnace is performing with an optimised heat system, hot metal tapping is smooth, as is equipment overall, and the workforce is performing well. PCI started running three days after the blow-in and a fast ramp-up was achieved.”

CISDI’s dedication and professionalism alleviated concerns FHS had around blow-in and early-stage operations. “CISDI supplied us not only with quality blast furnace equipment, but also excellent operations technical assistance,” said an FHS spokesperson.

The twin blast furnaces are now running smoothly, with all main production indicators exceeding the design. There has not been a single hanging, slip or channeling incident, which can occur in large blast furnaces and FHS is seeing significant savings on time costs and malfunction costs.

As a result, FHS invited CISDI to provide production and operations technical assistance at its steelmaking and rolling plants, despite the fact that CISDI is not the designer and EPC contractor of those plants. It took only two months for CISDI to achieve much smoother operations at the steelmaking plant.

Commended FHS’s stakeholder, the China Steel Corporation: “We are fully confident in and appreciative of CISDI’s technical assistance capabilities, expertise and experience”.

A night view of FHS’s twin blast furnaces in Vietnam, which represent China’s first export of large-sized ironmaking equipment. They each have a volume of 4,350 cubic metres and were built by CISDI to an EPC mode

CISDI’s expert production and operations team are pictured at FHS’s BF casthouse platform