HCMC – Construction steel products in Vietnam will soon be required to adopt digital traceability systems, as regulators move to combat counterfeit and underweight steel products that have increasingly found their way into construction projects.
Under the new requirements, steel products must carry traceability codes attached directly to packaging or goods through labels, printing, engraving, casting or other identification methods. Manufacturers will also be required to establish internal data management systems and connect them securely to the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s national traceability platform through application programming interfaces (APIs).
Authorities have established a two-stage implementation roadmap to allow businesses time to adapt. Beginning July 1, companies must register accounts, obtain identification codes and authenticate product information. Full compliance will become mandatory on January 1, 2027, with traceability requirements needing to be completed before steel products can be placed on the market.
The new rules are set out in Circular No. 31/2026/TT-BCT, which governs product traceability for goods under state management. Under the framework, the entire supply history of a steel batch—from smelting and rolling to quality inspection and warehouse release—must be digitized and standardized in accordance with Vietnam’s TCVN 12850 standard or the global GS1 standard, enabling consumers and businesses to verify product origins.
The regulation represents a significant effort to improve transparency in one of the construction sector’s most critical materials. For years, the market has faced problems stemming from manually recycled scrap steel and counterfeit labeling practices, which have undermined legitimate manufacturers and exposed contractors and property owners to structural safety risks.
Industry participants, however, face significant implementation challenges. Integrating digital records into individual steel products across heavy industrial environments and construction sites will require substantial investment in technology infrastructure.
For many manufacturers, the largest hurdle will be upgrading enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to enable automated data synchronization with government platforms through API connections. Maintaining uninterrupted traceability across multilayer distribution networks—including primary and secondary dealers—may also prove difficult if downstream participants fail to update information consistently.
As a result, the six-month transition period between July 2026 and January 2027 is expected to play a crucial role in allowing companies to restructure supply-chain processes, retrain personnel and fine-tune technology solutions before the new requirements become fully enforceable.
