South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction has signed a memorandum of understanding with Vietnamese group Bitexco to develop a smart township project in Ha Nam province.
Hyundai E&C CEO Yoon Young-joon and Bitexco chairman Vu Quang Hoi signed the MoU in Hanoi recently, with the witness of Korean Ambassador to Vietnam Park Noh-wan and Vietnamese government officials.
The project, named Ha Nam Eco-Smart Urban Living Tomorrow City, is about 50 kilometers south of Hanoi.
Hyundai will participate from the basic design stage onwards to build an urban zone on 861 hectares in the new township, including residential and service infrastructure facilities as well as smart operating systems.
In addition, the South Korean construction company will jointly develop a hi-tech zone on about 663 hectares, which will accommodate research and development (R&D) centers, office buildings, commercial facilities, and a smart logistics center.
The major urban area project is part of a broader plan to develop satellite townships in the nine provinces surrounding Hanoi.
Hyundai E&C and Bitexco have built up their business ties for many years now. The former constructed the Bitexco Financial Tower, a 262-meter-tall structure with 68 floors in HCMC, which opened in 2010 as the city’ highest building then.
Another project Bitexco awarded to Hyundai E&C is the iconic five-star JW Marriott Hanoi hotel, completed in Hanoi in 2012. The Bitexco-owned hotel is next to the National Convention Center.
Hyundai E&C also built the Mong Duong 1 thermal power plant in the northern province of Quang Ninh, which completed in 2016.
Meanwhile, Lotte E&C, another South Korean firm, broke ground Friday on the multi-function Eco Smart City in Ho Chi Minh City's Thu Thiem Peninsula. The $900 million, 50,000 square meter project will comprise a shopping mall, a hotel, office buildings, serviced apartments and a residential complex, using smart technologies. It will include five underground floors and 60 above-ground ones.
This June, South Korea’s Daewoo E&C and cloud delivery platform company Bespin Global set up a joint venture in Vietnam - the Smart City Operation Joint Venture - to build an integrated command and control center in Starlake City, an urban complex near West Lake in Hanoi.