Chairman Tran Dinh Quyen with Acuity Funding president Ranjit Thambyrajah at September 25’s signing event

On September 25, Australian Acuity Funding committed to invest $6.4 billion for Tin Thanh Group (TTG) to implement green projects.

Accordingly, circa $1 billion will be used to develop four biomass power plants and thousands of hectares of sorghum cultivation in central and south of Vietnam.

Around $1.7 billion will be set aside to build a tyre retread, tyre recycling and truck service plant in South Carolina over one million trucks in the United States with the goal of reducing emissions, saving costs, and transitioning to green energy.

TTG has been granted land and support from the state of South Carolina with huge incentives over $500 million.

The remaining $3.7 billion in funding will go towards building a green hydrogen manufacturing facility in the same state.

According to chairman and CEO of TTG Tran Dinh Quyen, the company’s strategy is to become a full-service business and pioneering company on the basis of its patents, and become a circular service chain that includes technology, industry, production, trade, and recycling.

“The business models and technologies of the projects are highly practical so they can be applied on a global scale,” Quyen said. “Business activity from the projects will raise the annual trade between Vietnam, Australia, and the US to hundreds of billions of US dollars and bring a lot of bilateral benefits in the exchange of technology, capital, and labour to participate in the development of projects in the three countries and expand worldwide.”

The move also lays the foundation for the export of breakthrough technologies, inventions, and products from Vietnam and Australia into advanced fields at the forefront of development trends, especially with the values brought to the community through environmental protection, emission reduction, energy, and cost savings.

The funding will cover a multitude of vital areas, Photo: Le Toan

Humanitarian priority

Talking with VIR, Ranjit Thambyrajah, president and managing director of Acuity Funding, highly evaluates the position of Vietnam as the flagship in the company’s growth portfolio.

“Acuity Funding and its investors and lenders are committed to supporting the people of Vietnam and the growth of the country. Vietnam is a world leader in technology and drive for excellence. It is only natural that I am drawn to the people here, and I relate very closely to their drive and tenacity,” he said.

According to Thambyrajah, Acuity Funding always looks for any project that has a high humanitarian focus.

“All projects we take on must benefit the public and must keep them safe in their investments. We are interested in assisting those who are struggling with bonds or infrastructure, particularly on power plants and fuel. These are critical aspects of growth, and we want to support such projects,” he added.

Quyen of TTG added that through the global carbon reduction circular transport programme alone, TTG’s goal by 2030 will be to reach one million container trucks using its services each year, and beyond that to dominate 10-20 per cent market share of full-service truck operations in this country.

“This investment fund is committed to accompanying the circular ecosystem of this business and the fund will disburse capital according to project implementation progress,” Quyen added.

Exclusive tech

Since its establishment more than 20 years ago, TTG has been a pioneer in using renewable energy and reducing global emissions, aiming for a multi-industry business and sustainable development for an increasingly better environment.

After starting business in the construction industry and expanding to saturated steam production and exporting tyres abroad, Quyen is still extremely eager to build a successful chain with technology convergence, industrial, manufacturing, commercial, and circular services for many different industries.

In Vietnam, TTG is implementing a closed industrial-agricultural project from research, seed incubation and development of raw material areas to exploitation and processing of all kinds of products from Sorghum. TTG has Strategic Sorghum Research and Development Institute to research, select, breed, grow, and develop varieties of sorghum suitable to the conditions of many different regions.

Particularly for biomass power plants, TTG is cooperating with Air Products Group in the US to apply exclusive technologies such as co-firing of biomass and coal. The exclusive technology enriches oxygen into the boiler’s combustion chamber to improve efficiency and the use of nitrogen gas as well as excess heat to reduce fuel moisture.

Therefore, TTG will build four biomass power plants that have been included in Vietnam’s Power Development Plan VIII, including one plant each in Danang and Kon Tum province and two others in An Giang province, with a total capacity of 165MW.

In the US, TTG is investing in a carbon-reducing circular transport scheme and the first foundation – a tyre retreading, recycling, and lubricant production factory in South Carolina – broke ground in March and is expected to be finished in 2024.

Along with this project, TTG is expected to cooperate with more than 50 satellite factories across the US as processing suppliers. At the same time, it will develop 2,000 mobile technical service vehicles related to the project of full-service operation of transport vehicles across the country.

Meanwhile, an app called Ecore and a smart chip with more than 10 features will be unique benefits to the operation of an all-in truck service package. The outstanding features of the app are similar to the software used by airlines, including notifying the origin, pressure, temperature, speed, location, tyre wear, load and more. The vehicle owners can access the information anywhere if a mobile phone network is available.

In addition, TTG will inject liquid nitrogen into each tyre, provided by Air Products at its 2,000 mobile technical service vehicles. The tyres are injected with pure nitrogen instead of air to increase more than nine beneficial features for operation and use.

With the types of lubricants that TTG uses, this product is made at the tyre retreading and recycling factory, adding TTG’s exclusive graphene super nano additive. When using this additive, the life of the oil and engine will be greatly increased, as will fuel economy. This technology has been patented in the US.

As for the green hydrogen production plant in South Carolina, TTG aims to produce with a capacity of 150,000 tonnes per year from locally available biomass materials and supplement the biomass source from sorghum trees that TTG has been diligently researched and developed.

This project is being developed by TTG in cooperation with Air Products, and it is hoped that the output will bring a major change to the automobile industry and especially outdated, polluting coal-fired power plants.