Roofing Panel Factory branch of Thai Nguyen Metallurgical Engineering JSC., began operations in 1996 and has a relatively large production with nearly 16 thousand m2 area. Factory specialized in manufacturing asbestos-cement roofing AC waveform based on French’s technology with a capacity of 3.8 million plates/year. Total employee of the company is 356 persons. Factory specializing in producing roofing for rural and mountainous areas, especially the consumption of the 135 program of the northwestern mountainous provinces like Dien Bien, Lai Chau, Ha Giang ... meet the needs of civil construction for poor farmers and low income people.

Before conducting CP, environmental pollution by water and dust pollution is mainly problem in the factory. Wastewater is alkaline and mixed with asbestos, cement. Factory has silo system (water tower) deposited recovery but low efficiency, the design capacity does not meet the actual. Dust generated a lot of cement grinding workshops, especially in mixing area. Enterprises do not have dust treatment and recovery systems, it leads to polluted air, not only affects the employee's health, but also loss of relatively large amounts of input materials. For solving these problems, in 2007, the factory received the support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade via the Cleaner Production in Industry Component (CPI) to conduct Cleaner Production Assessment and Application

Under the supporting of Thai Nguyen Industry and Trade Department, in 2007 the Factory had implemented CP assessment. During the first phase (from October 2007 to March 2009), the company established a CP team led by Mr. Duong Van Cuc – Vice Director of the company and other 9 members to assess the whole production line. After the Cleaner production assessment (CPA) and identification of waste line, the Team has conducted mass and energy balances for the whole production line. All collected data have been used to analyze and identify Cleaner Production options for each production step.

After conducting CPA and identifying improvement options, the Company has carried out 12 good housekeeping and process control options with no and low investment cost. Such application has brought about VND 2,2 billion millions each year. In the second phase (from April 2009 to August 2010), the Company has actively implemented high-investment options to improve the product quality and solve completely the environmental issues at place, specifically investing VND 1,9 billions for installation system semi-automatic feeder to reduce material losses and reduce dust emissions to the environment and improve the working environment for workers, installation water recovery system in the secondary (silo sedimentation) to the entire circulation of the plant effluent and reducing water consumption. Benefits from those solutions are 1.9 billion dong in 2010 and 390 million dong in 1st quarter of 2011 by reducing raw material consumption and reducing environment pollution.

Particular benefits derived from Cleaner Production are as follows: