PVFCCo adds other fertilizer products in the Phu My fertilizers such as high quality Phu My NPK to replace the imports.

In operation of Phu My Fertilizer Plant to produce urea for agriculture to bring bumper crops, PVFCCo”s emulation movements have developed widely and deeply, such as movements of creative labour, initiative promotion, technical innovation and rationalization of production.

Creative incubator

It has been over four years to come back Phu My Fertilizer Plant. From Ho Chi Minh City, passing through Thu Thiem Tunnel, just over one hour, we come Phu My 1 Industrial Zone, Tan Thanh District, Ba Ria – Vung Tau Province.

Having just come in the plant, a young man rushed out to greet me. A little bit surprised, I realized immediately Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hai – an engineer graduating from Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology (Russia) and working at the Safety Department. Last time, when I went to Phu My Fertilizer Plant, Hai guided our journalists to visit the plant. Just 4 years, Hai has now been more seasoned than before. Asking each other for a while, Hai led us to visit workshops of the plant.

Visiting the plant when it had just been maintained and put into production, we realized a hard and funky working atmosphere. Emulation movements has always been paid attention to by PVFCCo to aim at successfully completing the business plans, and these emulation movements are continuously innovated and developed widely and deeply.

Typically, remarkable emulation movements include creative labour, initiative promotion, technical innovation, production rationalization. In particular, Phu My Fertilizer Plant is considered as PVFCCo”s cradle of initiatives and innovations with many initiatives and innovations from its young and skilled workforce. According to the statistics, from 2004 to present, more than 700 initiatives have been contributed in the plant, including valuable ones benefiting billions dongs, improving the plant”s working environment, increasing the lifespan of equipment, machinery, effectively saving costs, and ensuring safety for the plant

One of typical young faces in the initiative emulation movement is Mr. Nguyen Minh Duc – the foreman of Ammonia (NH3) plant of Phu My Fertilizer Plant. Born in 1980, native of Bac Giang, after graduating from Hanoi University of Science and Technology, majoring in petrochemicals, in 2009, Nguyen Minh Duc has worked at Phu My Fertilizer Plant. As the foreman of the Plant Control Department, Nguyen Minh Duc”s assignment is to manage and supervise his colleagues to stably operate the plant in accordance with the prescribed process; train, guide and help new employees to improve their operating capacity and handle unexpected incidents.

Nguyen Minh Duc said that the supervision work via a monitor displaying all information of machinery and operating parameters of the system seems to be easy, but in fact it is quite pressure and tension because it requires precision and quickly handling unexpected problems in the shortest time in order not to cause downtime for repair. Besides routine works, Nguyen Minh Duc always learns new knowledge, updates scientific and technical advances. Thanks to his experience and understanding, Mr. Duc has launched proactive maintenance approach to ensure that the plant is operating normally and stably with high efficiency.

Many of his initiatives have been recognized, such as the initiative to lower the emission temperature from Reformer while ensuring technological conditions to reduce energy consumption. Mr. Duc also co-operated with his colleagues to contribute the initiative to move circulated hydrogen sugar forward equipment 10-E-2004/2 to mitigate the phenomenon of carbon soot clogging the system. As a result, such problem has been remedied almost completely after applying the initiative.

Young engineers at the Central Control Room of Phu My Fertilizer Plant to ensure stable and safe operation of the plant

In addition, there are many technical innovations from engineers and skilled workers who has proactively and confidently operated and maintained Phu My Fertilizer Plant in an absolutely safe manner. The maintenance method has been changed from unscheduled repair to planned maintenance. The periodic and preventive maintenance works are carried out well for equipment in the plant. This is important to minimize the downtime, ensure stable, safety and efficient production.

Strategic steps for bumper crops

Phu My Fertilizer Plant is the first petrochemical plant in the nitrogenous fertilizer production area using modern technology in the world with a design capacity of 740,000 tons of urea/year. PVFCCo’s Chairman, Mr. Le Cu Tan said that in the past 12 years, PVFCCo has always fulfilled and exceeded the production plan assigned by the Group. The plant’s output has always been higher than the designed capacity. Specifically, in October 2010, PVFCCo put the project of recovering CO2 from emissions of Phu My Fertilizer Plant into operation to generate the production output at 807 thousand tons of urea, and 2014 was the year of record production with 885 thousand tons of converted urea.

Not only does PVFCCo produce the traditional product that is urea, but PVFCCo also diversifies its production and business activities, adds other fertilizer products in Phu My fertilizers such as Phu My NPK, Phu My Kali, Phu My DAP, Phu My SA with high quality, fully meeting the nutritional need of crops at each growth stage and each soil zone.

PVFCCo”s Chairman, Mr. Le Cu Tan said that the domestic urea supply has been now greater than the demand, so besides exporting urea to other markets, PVFCCo has proactively changed its investment strategy to manufacturing chemicals and preparations therefrom. Currently, PVFCCo are continuously promoting implementation of chemical projects such as the project UFC85/Formandehyde.

The project was started in quarter II/2014, expected to go into operation in quarter IV/2015. Every year, the plant will produce and supply the domestic market 7,000 tons of UFC85 and 13,000 tons of Formalin – these are important additives in the process of urea granulation to prevent conglomerating, increase the hardness of products, reduce the percentage of broken, wet particles, chips, and avoid the phenomenon of leaf blast when fertilizing crops.

In order for farmers to easily approach PVFCCo”s fertilizers, PVFCCo has developed a nationwide distribution system with 3.053 agencies, stores set up in rice and industrial crop growing areas. PVFCCo has also organized regular training courses for farmers to use fertilizers in the most efficient way, and protect the environment as much as possible. Currently, according to Nielsen Vietnam, the market assessment leader, the market share of Phu My Urea accounts for 40% of the national average and ranks the top in Vietnam.

With this outstanding achievement, PVFCCo is considered as the typical example of the Party”s Tam Nong policy (three major objects in agriculture), leading the movement “Enterprises jointly build a new countryside”, contributing to change the face of rural areas, bringing bumper crops. PVFCCo ranked in the TOP 10 enterprises with outstanding social security program and received the Merit certificate from the Central of Vietnam Farmers Union for its contribution to operations of Vietnam Farmers Union during the past time.

Ba Ria – Vung Tau, August 2015

Lê Kim Liên

(Cohoigiaothuong)