Vietnam's masterbatch star goes global

By David Monson

Coming from a humble beginning and rising to occupy an acknowledged position as Vietnam's biggest material process plastic manufacturer is an achievement that can be hard to beat considering that this was all done in just three years. But
Managing Director and co-founder of the European Plastic Joint Stock Company, Mr. Nguyen Manh Cuong, has not sat back to relax as he himself admits the "back breaking efforts" that have been put into getting the company off the ground to become internationally recognised for the quality of its Filler Master Batches known under the E-Filler trade name. International Plastics News for Asia
(IRNA) caught up with Mr. Nguyen at the company's booth when it exhibited at K 2010 in Düsseldorf.

IRNA: What makes the company's black/white and coloured masterbatches stand out in this sector?

Nguyen: We're putting 60% calcium carbonate (CaCO3) into the composition of a plastic bag. So when you consider that in any one year the world uses tens of millions of tonnes of plastic bags, you have one humongous market on your hands. Not to mention the fact that the various grades of our products can be
used in any field of the plastic industry, from co-extrusion film and injection or blow moulding to blowing film, extrusion and yarn threading.

IRNA: So as the world's number one E-filler producing company, how would you describe your operations?

Nguyen: Our factory in Dong Van Industrial Zone, Duy Tien district, Ha Nam Province runs around the clock with more than 30 technical engineers, some of them, who like myself, are part of the management and have spent a lifetime in the plastics industry sweating over ways to improve products using enhanced
techniques. And our 70 skilled workers all operate the new 'all-electric German and American made machinery. As for our machinery, I visited Germany's Coperion Group and K-Tron in the United States (US) for what was qualitatively the best equipment on the market today to produce our high quality E-filler. They had their price and we had our standards.

Because we use hi-tech automatic and fitting controllers, the machines we ordered from Germany and the US were incredibly advanced and on the high-end. Our suppliers found it hard to believe that a Vietnamese company could come up with the cash so I had to fly to Germany to convince them that I had resources to buy such machines. Now these same companies are ready to customise their machines to match our specifications. Our production lines which are based on the European standard because of these equipment, are now capable or reaching a capacity of up to 2500 tonnes per month.

IRNA: The best equipment to make the best product. That means your own standards had to be exceptionally high?

Nguyen: You could certainly say so. Here's the difference. Our E-filler does exactly as we say it does - it seriously reduces costs. Consider that currently resins cost $1,390 per tonne while our product clocks in at $500 a tonne. So the world pays less for its plastic bags. This is some achievement and based on a patented technique that is all our own. It's most important to make sure that
the quality of the product at every stage of production has been carried out with imported equipment, manufactured according to international norms and standards. It's as simple as this: if the most important part of the criteria is constant quality, you've got to raise the bar when it comes to the equipment you use.

The quality of European Plastics's product under the brand name "EuroPlast" has been affirmed not only by advanced technology but also through the use of stable and high quality material from the world's most reliable suppliers amongst them being DNEW BALANCE