Vietnam's dairy industry is increasingly asserting its position.

(Baonghean.vn) - On September 9, 2014, in Hanoi, the Vietnam Dairy Association in collaboration with the Vietnam Association of Food Science and Technology organized a seminar on the Vietnamese dairy industry with the theme: Developing and diversifying dairy products for community health.

Overview of the workshop

The report of the Vietnam Dairy Association shows that, in recent times, the Vietnamese dairy industry has made great strides in both processing technology, dairy farming, providing raw materials and affirming its brand.

The domestic dairy industry has had many new modern dairy factories established, with products that can compete with the world dairy industry, the most typical of which are the two dairy factories of Vinamilk. The Vietnam Dairy Factory (Vinamilk) was built on an area of ​​20 hectares with a total investment of VND 2,400 billion, located in Binh Duong province, focusing on liquid milk products.

With a designed capacity of 400 million liters of milk per year in phase 1, and 800 million liters in phase 2 (expected to be implemented in 2017). This is considered a mega factory with the most modern technology in the world, with a closed automatic production system from input to output, smart robots, smart warehouse system... In addition, Vietnam also has a modern baby milk powder factory invested by Vinamilk with more than 2,000 billion VND to build with a designed capacity of 54,000 tons of milk powder per year, which is also considered the largest milk powder processing factory in Asia. Besides Vinamilk, Frieslandcampina Vietnam Company is also focusing on investing in developing livestock farming areas; IDP International Dairy Joint Stock Company supports capital for farmers to develop more cow herds; Moc Chau Milk Company, TH True Milk Group has also installed additional production lines to meet consumer demand,...

In addition to building modern processing plants, domestic dairy companies in many forms also build and develop milk sources for their processing plants such as supporting households to develop dairy farming, building industrial and modern dairy farms with a scale of thousands of cows. These farms are not only modern in terms of barn equipment and scale, but also advanced in management and operation models, complying with the strictest requirements of the world's dairy and food industries such as Viet Dairy GAP, Global Gap, ISO... Vietnam is also honored to have a system of dairy farms that meet the international standards of Global GAP, which are farms in Nghe An, Lam Dong, Tuyen Quang belonging to Vinamilk, etc.

Most recently, the Vietnamese dairy industry was also proud when Vinamilk won the IUFoST 2014 Global Food Industry Award in Canada. With this award, Vinamilk's liquid milk products surpassed more than 100 nominated products from 70 countries to enter the final round and win the 2014 Global Food Industry Award. It is worth noting that among all the nominations from countries around the world, only Vinamilk from Vietnam is the dairy company that won the award. The 2014 Global Food Industry Award is a large-scale international award, within the framework of the world food science and technology conference held every two years and this is the 17th time, gathering famous global scientists in the food industry to participate in the evaluation.

The total herd of dairy cows in Vietnam in 2014 (statistics as of April 1, 2014) was 200,400, an increase of 14% compared to 2013 and an increase of 67% compared to 2010. Many large companies and economic groups are planning to invest in the dairy farming industry. This is a leap forward in quantity and quality of the Vietnamese dairy farming industry (when modern industrial farms are established alongside family farms). This demonstrates the development of the connection between the milk processing industry and the dairy farming industry, and is a model suitable for the specific conditions of Vietnam as well as developing countries.

Vietnamese consumers are completely assured and have many choices in using domestic dairy products with a variety of types from liquid milk, powdered milk, condensed milk, drinking yogurt, yogurt... and for many users such as children, the elderly, pregnant women, sick people... According to research by Kantar Worldpanel Vietnam, liquid milk products hold the leading position in the food and beverage industry with a growth rate of 12% in urban areas and 20% in rural areas, live yogurt increased by 15%... are the main domestically produced products.

Regarding powdered milk, according to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in the first 5 months of 2014, production output increased by 5.52% compared to the same period in 2013, showing that this product has gradually taken over the domestic market with increasing output. Currently, Vietnam is one of the few countries in Asia that exports milk. In 2013, Vietnam exported dairy products worth more than 230 million USD, mainly from Vinamilk with a value of more than 210 million USD. Vinamilk was also recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Trade as a prestigious exporting enterprise in 2013. This is a testament to the fact that domestically produced dairy products not only meet the trust of Vietnamese consumers but also reach out to the world dairy market.

The discussions on milk standards presented at the workshop also showed that product diversification has met the increasing needs of consumers. Sterilized milk products (or sterilized reconstituted milk) supplemented with micronutrients suitable for each user group are also very good for consumers to choose, not necessarily only fresh milk is good as some previous information.

Through these facts, it can be seen that the Vietnamese dairy industry is following the government's direction and is in line with the sustainable development roadmap of the dairy industry, which is to combine the development of modern technology and the development of raw materials to meet the quantity and quality in a sustainable, friendly and environmentally friendly manner to create dairy products that both meet consumer demand and ensure the highest food safety, meeting the domestic market and expanding to regional and world markets.

HH