HCM City – Dairy giant Vinamilk will continue to expand abroad, especially in emerging market like Laos and Myanmar, this year.

“Vinamilk will build a plant in Myanmar and an organic cow farm of several thousand hectares in Laos this year,” Đỗ Thanh Tuấn, the company’s PR director, told a press conference in HCM City on Thursday.

All procedures have been completed for the farm, which will be just 100km from another Vinamilk farm in the central province of Nghệ An.

“We will expand our [farms in Việt Nam] to meet demand.” Tuấn said.

Now dairy production in the country only meets 35 per cent of the demand.

“Vinamilk can collect 750 tonnes of fresh milk from its 10 farms and 8,000 farming households daily, and that is enough to meet the national demand for pasteurised milk,” Tuấn said.

The company already has plans in place to process coconuts for export, especially to the United States.

“Việt Nam has huge potential in coconut products, but only one domestic company, TTC, is exporting them. We recognise that demand for coconut products in the US is huge, and Vinamilk decided to enter the market and a large raw material supply area will be set up soon in the southern province of Bến Tre.”

In the last 20 years, 2017 was the first time the company’s exports declined due to political fluctuations in the Middle East, a big market for it, he said.

“We only achieved 67 per cent of the year’s export target, but thanks to an immediate change in strategy to focus on the domestic market, Vinamilk’s turnover still increased by 10 per cent from 2016.”

At the end of last year, the company also marked its presence in the sugar industry by acquiring a 65 per cent stake in the Khánh Hòa Sugar Company for nearly VNĐ1 trillion (US$44 million) and changing its name to the Việt Nam Sugar Joint Stock Company (Vietsugar).

“Every year, Vinamilk consumes around 130,000 tonnes of sugar, but the price of sugar in Việt Nam is always 30-40 per cent higher than in neighbouring countries, especially Thailand.

“We will be very active in producing sugar and even plan to triple the capacity of Vietsugar to 500,000 tonnes a year,” Tuấn said.

He promised that the sugar made by Vinamilk would be cheaper than others’ and the company could take advantage of its 260,000 retail shops to sell the product.

Last year, the company had a 58 per cent stake of the estimated $4 billion dairy market. – VNS