Vietnam’s milk supply is falling short of domestic demand, leading to a rise in imports and a race to expand production among local firms.

Illustrative photo (Source: VNA)

According to the country’s fresh milk production planning, 1 billion litres of milk is expected to be produced in 2020 and 1.4 billion litres in 2025.

However, such outputs will only meet 38 and 40 percent of domestic demand, respectively. The rest will have to be obtained via imports.

In the first quarter of 2019, Vietnam spent 258.19 million USD importing milk and dairy products, an annual increase of 11.74 percent. Key suppliers included New Zealand, Southeast Asian countries and EU nations, which provided 37, 22.35, and 15.41 percent of total imports, respectively.

Meanwhile, big domestic producers like Vinamilk, TH Group and Nutifood are racing to expand their dairy farms and production yield.

Vietnam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk) has started working with the Lao – Jagro Development Xiengkhouang Co.,Ltd (Lao – Jagro) to establish an organic milch cow farming resort complex in the Lao province of Xiengkhouang. 

Set to cost a cool 500 million USD, the complex will sprawl over 20,000ha with 100,000 milk cows.

In early May, dairy producer TH Group began construction of a dairy farm project in Nong Cong district, the central province of Thanh Hoa.

The project will be built at the total cost of 3.8 trillion VND (162.6 million USD), covering 1,354 ha of land in Yen My and Cong Binh communes. It is designed for a herd of 20,000 cows and a processing plant with capacity of 300 tonnes of milk per day.