Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. (Tokyo, Japan; www.shinetsu.co.jp) has decided to establish a new rare-earth magnet manufacturing plant in the Vietnam. The manufacturing capacity of the new plant will be 2,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) and the investment amount is about ¥12 billion ($117 million). The new plant will be built in two phases on land that Shin-Etsu Chemical’s Group company in Vietnam, Shin-Etsu Magnetic Materials Vietnam, owns in Hai Phong Province. The construction work will start in October 2014. The first-phase portion of the plant construction work is scheduled to be completed in September 2015 with a production capacity of 1,000 m.t./yr and the second-phase portion to be completed in September 2016 with another 1,000 m.t./yr of capacity.
The rare-earth magnet manufacturing process is broadly divided into two key processes: sintering and machining. Previously, Shin-Etsu’s Takefu Plant in Fukui Prefecture in Japan was tits only site that carried out the sintering process. The new plant that in Vietnam is scheduled to set up a sintering process similar to the one at the Takefu Plant. With the construction of the new plant, the total production capacity for the sintering process will become about 1.5 times greater.
Previously in Vietnam, in 2012 Shin-Etsu Chemical established Shin-Etsu Magnetic Materials Vietnam, a Group company that carries out the separation and refinement of rare earths, which are the main raw materials for rare earth magnets. Its plant began operations in 2013. The new rare-earth magnet plant will be built on land next to this separation and refinement plant and it will receive the supply of raw materials from this plant.