Animal feed market in the hands of FIEs

Vietnamese companies believe they can obtain a share in the domestic market

Prior to that, CJ Vina Agri (the Republic of Korea) put its sixth feed mill into operation and plans to open the seventh mill in Mekong Delta soon. 

Meanwhile, Mavin (Australia) opened a new factory last May, its fifth factory in Vietnam. The other producers including De Heus (the Netherlands) and Haid (Singapore) have also inaugurated new factories.

Other FIEs such as CP (Thailand), Neovia (France), Emivest Feedmill (Malaysia) and Japfa Comfeed (Japan) has not set up new mills, but they are big manufacturers.

CP Vietnam (CPV), for example, has 10 mills throughout the country with the total capacity of 4.2 million tons, or 20% of total output in Vietnam, according to MARD.

FIEs, though having 61 mills only, make up 60%-65% of total output. Vietnamese enterprises, including GreenFeed, Anova Feed, Masa, Hoa Phat and Vingroup, though having made heavy investment in the field, remain inferior to FIEs, holding 23% of market share only.

However, the upper hand of FIEs cannot discourage Vietnamese enterprises. Le Thanh Phuong, director of Emivest Feedmill Vietnam, said that the companies all have plans to expand the production.

Vietnam’s livestock industry needs 16-18 million tons of animal feed products each year, worth US$6 billion.

Grand View Research estimated that the animal feed market may be valued at US$10.55 billion by 2020 and 25-26 million tons of products would be needed by that time.

In the first seven months of the year, Vietnam spent US$2.2 billion to import animal feed and materials to make feed. USDA Post predicted that Vietnam would still need to import 76% of raw materials for domestic feed production in 2019.

According to Montri Suwanposri, general director of CPV, large companies mostly operate under the mode of closed chains. 

That is why GreenFeed not only owns eight factories in Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar, but also has breeder farms and pig farming system. It also runs a slaughterhouse and develops a chain of shops to distribute its food products.

A report shows that of 2.4 million tons of products made last year, CPV only sold 40%, while the other 60% was used within its farming network. Emivest and Japfta also do not sell animal feed in the market.

Vietnamese enterprises still believe they can obtain a share in the domestic market. Hoa Phat, for example, seeks 10% of market share in the next 10 years.