Tongwei’s appetite to succeed

This is the second factory of China-based Tongwei Company to operate in Vietnam. The first factory located in southern Tien Giang province coming online in 2007.

The $10 million factory, covering 30,000 square metres, is equipped with the latest technology to process food for domestic animals. The new facility has a designed capacity of 200,000 tonnes per year.

“The factory will recruit around 200 workers from the local market. With huge development potential of the animal feed industry, we decided to build this factory with an aim to meet the market’s increasing demand. Tongwei Company will expand from three to five its affiliates in the next three to five years in Vietnam,” said the company’s general director Tang Ming.

He added that the factory was built with safe and clear norms to supply quality animal feed product for Vietnam’s market.  

China-based Tongwei Company was founded in 1984 specialising on aquaculture, producing and trading animal feed. One of China’s key leading enterprises in agriculture industrialisation, Tongwei operates nationwide as well as in Southeast Asia with more than 110 subsidiary companies.

The market share of Vietnamese companies faces a challenge amid the expansion of foreign competitors.

In July of this year, Japfa Comfeed Vietnam, an affiliate of Japfa -- one of Indonesia’s leading groups in producing and trading animal feed and breeding animals--started work on the fifth animal feed factory in Vietnam, with the 7.6 hectare plant in northern Hoa Binh province coming with VND600 billion ($28.8 million) price tag. Japfa Comfeed Vietnam is targeted to reach the animal feed output of one million tonnes by 2015 and two million tonnes by 2020.

In March, Cargill Vietnam, an affiliate of the US-based Cargill Group, inaugurated its ninth animal feed plant in the country. The new $18 million facility, covering four hectares in northern Ha Nam province, turns out 240,000 tonnes of feed per year.

Vietnam Animal Feed Association chairman Le Ba Lich said that Vietnam was home to more than 20 foreign-invested animal feed companies which accounted for up to 70 per cent of the market share and nearly 180 Vietnamese businesses but the market share of the local firms made up only 30 per cent.