Oct 25, 2018
On July 20th 2018, CPC Corporation, Taiwan (CPC) and the SOVICO Group of Vietnam signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC). CPC President Lee Shun-Chin and SOVICO Group President Nguyen Thanh Hung were the respective representative signatories, while CPC Chairman Tai Chein, Taiwan’s Cabinet-rank Minister without Portfolio Teng Chen-Chung and Representative in the Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei Chen Wei-Hai were there to witness the signing ceremony. The MOC provides for future collaboration between the two companies in exploration for oil and gas, trading petroleum products and petrochemicals, lubricant sales and related investment opportunities. CPC itself will continue to develop its own and other business opportunities in Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries outside of this venture.
The SOVICO Group was founded by the Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao family and is a company well known in Vietnam. The Group has over 20 subsidiaries and its business scope covers civil aviation (Vietjet), oil trading and gas stations (PV Oil), real-estate (Long Thanh development projects and hotels), and banking (HD Bank). The Group is also active in developing renewable energy sources and in the power generation business. Their Vietjet airline is the one with the most flights between Taiwan and Vietnam; named one of Vietnam’s top 50 companies, it has a market value of over USD 1 billion (approximately NTD 30 billion).
After having signed this MOC, CPC will use its Exploration & Production Division and other petroleum product-related business units as the basis for working with the SOVICO Group in the business areas mentioned earlier. One significant objective for CPC in this is to expand investment in, and trade with, the countries covered by the New Southbound Policy and so bring to realization the long-term cultivation of relationships, diversity of development objectives and mutuality of benefit that are its core tenets. By raising the level of cooperation with Vietnamese enterprises and promoting in-country real estate development, job creation and interaction between nationals of both countries, CPC aims corporately to create a mutually beneficial and collaborative business model.
Within CPC it is believed that Vietnam is a country with high growth potential. In recent years its economy has grown at the rate of 6% annually, and there is the view that additional gains are possible. CPC is therefore actively engaging with Vietnam in the context of the government’s aforementioned New Southbound Policy: it currently has investment commitments in the form of the Dai Hai Petroleum Corporation (DHP) and the Maxihub Company Limited (Maxihub) respectively located in Haiphong City and Dong Nai province. The groundbreaking ceremony for Maxihub took place in January of this year, marking the start of plant construction in collaboration with Taiwanese partner entities Unishine Chemical Corporation and Excel Chemical Corporation. The project’s planned scope is the production and sales of lubricants and the building and operation of a logistics hub for solvents and chemicals; full commercial operation is scheduled for 2020. DHP was established in 1994 to integrate Taiwan’s TASCO Group and Chinfon Global Corporation with locally-based HPI in the marketing and sales of LPG.