Thai Huong honoured for her sustainable development work

Held annually in major financial hubs around the world, such as Hong Kong, Milan, New York, London, and Dubai, the Le Fonti Awards recognise organisations that demonstrate corporate excellence in business innovation, leadership, technological achievement and employee engagement. It has been recognised as one of the world’s top business award ceremonies.

The Le Fonti Awards were established in 2008 in Italy by Le Fonti, a certified business-focused community of more than 10.5 million members. The name 'Le Fonti' recalls running spring water in Italian.

The awards are appraised by the Le Fonti Scientific Committee, along with a high-profile group of journalists and economic and legal experts from more than 120 nations.

Some very well-known figures have been honoured in the past, such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates, among many others.

Thai Huong, who was a labour heroine during the economic reforms in the 1980s, has been credited by the Le Fonti Scientific Committee for her successful implementation of high-tech agricultural projects that have boosted production rates considerably.

Under Huong’s leadership, TH Group has become an exemplary model of agricultural sustainable development in Vietnam, contributing to the country’s efforts in developing a knowledge-based circular economy.

Huong was honoured to be the first and only Vietnamese representative to be honoured by CSRWorks International as one of the Top 10 Women for Sustainable Development in Asia in 2021. Prior to that, Forbes magazine had voted her among the Top 50 most powerful businesswomen in Asia for several years in a row, as she fundamentally changed the Vietnamese milk industry.

She successfully revolutionised the production of clean and fresh milk that improved nutrition for Vietnamese people, and has been a trailblazer in economic development, providing livelihoods for the poor, overseeing initiatives that have alleviated hunger and reduced poverty, and environmental protection.

Huong is the sole Vietnamese businesswoman to have won an outstanding achievement award for community contributions in Dubai. She has also been granted many other awards, such as the Empowering Women Award at the World Knowledge Forum, the Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2018 Stevie Awards, and the Responsible Asia Leaders of Enterprise Asia that same year.

TH farm with a large-scale solar panel system

TH Group's $1.2 billion state-of-the-art dairy cow farm and fresh milk processing plant in the central province of Nghe An, Huong has made a major contribution to ensuring national food security.

With a capacity of 500,000 tonnes of fresh milk a year, the project was recognised in 2020 as the world’s largest high-tech centralised dairy farming and processing complex by the World Records Union. It has helped TH Group secure 45 per cent of the fresh milk market share in Vietnam. The complex is home to nearly 70,000 dairy cows, and a number of TH Group’s products have been recognised with international awards.

An initiator of the National School Milk Programme, Thai Huong desires to bring the best to children. Under her leadership, TH Group has cooperated with the Vietnamese education sector to work on a model for school meals, with many activities aimed at improving nutrition for children.

At present, Huong is providing investment advice to a slew of sustainable agricultural development projects throughout Vietnam. These projects centre on reforestation and the preservation and exploitation of indigenous medicinal herbs, which help local economies.

In 2021 in Glasgow, Vietnam and 147 other nations made a commitment to achieve net-zero emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) by 2050 at COP26, and this commitment was reiterated by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at COP28 in Dubai in late November.

This commitment has been upheld by many Vietnamese businesses, TH Group in particular. Thai Huong has directed TH Group to become one of the most outstanding businesses in the high-tech agricultural sector, in which TH has made huge progress in creating a green agricultural sector.

From mindset to action, and from corporate governance to implementation, TH Group focusses on three key activities: GHG emissions reduction; shifting to green and renewable energy; and GHG absorption.

TH Group had set a target of reducing GHG emissions at its farms and factories at an annual rate of 15 per cent. The same rate was also applied to each unit of the group's products.

In 2022, the group recorded decreased GHG emissions by more than 20 per cent per unit, exceeding the group’s target.

TH Group provides nutritious products for children TH Group organised an international conference titled Nutritional formula products from fresh milk – golden nutrition for optimal development in Hanoi on August 6, participated in by more than 300 experts and nutritionists from Vietnam and abroad.

TH Group showing the way in Vietnam-Australia ties TH Group is contributing to the flourishing investment cooperation between Vietnam and Australia, with its large-scale agricultural projects benefiting both economies.

TH Group Treasuring Mother Nature through action TH Group has made major moves towards net-zero emissions through the use of state-of-the-art technologies in its projects.