Hanoi (VNA) – Dairy giants Vinamilk,TH true Milk, Nutifood and Anova Milk are rolling out ambitious strategies toexport their products to China, a market with 1.4 billion people.

Vietnam’s dairy industry is developing well,producing about 1.2 billion litres of cow milk in 2017.

Experts said the most promising market forVietnamese dairy is China. Aside from the two countries’ close proximity, Chinais also a huge dairy market, with estimated value of 30 billion USD each year. 

Demand for dairy products in the country isforecast to soar by 37 percent to more than 40 billion USD in the next fiveyears, meaning China will surpass the US to become the biggest dairyconsumption market in the world.

In 2017, the Vietnam Diary Products Joint StockCompany (Vinamilk) inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation insupplying dairy products to the Chinese market, a prerequisite for the officialexport of Vinamilk products to China.

The firm runs 13 factories in Vietnam and threeothers in the US, New Zealand and Cambodia, along with 10 dairy farms acrossVietnam, and all of its cows are imported. Its products have been shipped to 43countries like the US, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines, gaining more than5.74 trillion VND (253 million USD) in export revenue in 2016 which is expectedto reach 350 million USD in 2017.

General Director of Vinamilk Mai Kieu Lien saidher company will boost sales in China. Average milk consumption in this marketis relatively low, about 25kg per year, so there is a potential for strongersales.

However, there remain many difficulties inexporting milk to China, she said, noting that Vietnam and China don’t havetrade agreements on milk and milk products. Although Vinamilk signed an MoUwith a Chinese partner, trade deals are still needed as some products haven’tbeen licensed to enter the market.

The Chinese side will survey Vinamilk’sfactories to finish agreements in the near future, Lien added.

Meanwhile, TH true Milk is also implementing amilk export strategy. In late November 2017, TH Group began a dairy farming andprocessing project in the border district of Vi Xuyen of northern Ha Giangprovince. With planned investment of 4.5 trillion VND (198.4 million USD), theproject aims to export fresh milk to China.

The firm opened a branch in Guangzhou city andalso distributed some TH true Milk products in China.

Thai Huong, Chairwoman of TH Group, said 50 – 60containers of their products are shipped to China each month. The Chinesepartner ordered goods in very large volume, but the firm didn’t have enoughdairy to fill the orders.

She expressed her hope that the project in HaGiang will help TH approach this potential market.-VNA