Participants visit booths at the Vietnam International Milk and Dairy Products Exhibition 2017 (Photo: VNA)Hanoi(VNA) – Experts spoke highly of the potential of Vietnam’s dairy industry at aseminar in Hanoi on May 31 as part of the Vietnam International Milk and DairyProducts Exhibition 2017.
“Milk industry is already ona growth path, and yet I could see huge potential in some areas that we all canexplore,” said Robert Graves of Tetra Pak Vietnam, known for its foodprocessing and packaging solutions.
“We could accelerate growth through increased penetration, innovation, ridingon emerging trends and improving environmental profiles of our businessoperations,” he said.
Producers are focusing on sustainable production from optimizing energyconsumption to using renewable packaging materials, Graves said, adding that basingon new trends, Tetra Pak has launched services that apply digital foundations inthe milk production.
Vietnam’s dairy industry is witnessing strong and rapid growth, Bui Truong Thang,Deputy Director General of Light Industry Department under the Ministry ofIndustry and Trade.
“With an average growth rate of more than 15 percent per year from 2010-2015, Vietnam’sdairy sector is increasingly creating a fresh and favourable development spacefor enterprises,” Thang said.
Businesses are constantly investing in the renovation of equipment to improveproductivity and enhance quality to meet domestic demand. Many largeenterprises like Vinamilk, TH True Milk and Nutrifood have set up large-scalemilk processing plants, he said
Besides, they also have invested in dairy farms to provide more raw materialsfor production, he added.
Over the last five years, the scale of dairy farms has steadily increased, withthe total number of milk cows rising from over 140,000 in 2011 to nearly300,000 in 2016, said Vu Ngoc Quỳnh, general secretary of the Vietnam DairyAssociation.
Raw material for milk production also jumped from 300,000 tonnes of milk tomore than 900,000 tonnes from 2013 to 2016, Quynh said, adding that the revenueof the local dairy industry in the period of 2010-2015 increased from 42trillion VND to more than 92 trillion VND.
In addition to opportunities, firms also face challenges ahead, Quynh said.
Vietnam’s dairy farming scale remains modest; farming households with fewerthan 10 cows accounts for over 90 per cent of the country’s cows.
“Besides unfavourable climate for raising milk cows, the poor quality controlsystem and the lack of storage and processing technology are also the obstaclesfor businesses,” Quynh said.-VNA
