July 18, 2003

Foreign-Owned Aquaculture Feed Producer In Vietnam Expanding Annual Capacity To 30,000 Tons

For the first half of 2003, Tomboy Aquafeed, a foreign-owned company supplying feed for fish breeding, has sold more than 15,000 ton of feed in only its second year of operation in Vietnam.

Its revenue was three times the amount reported for the same period last year.

By the end of this year, feed production from its plants in Vietnam is expected to double to 30,000 tons, from a new factory that cost the company US$1 million.

Currently, its products are sold in 20 cities and provinces in Vietnam through a network of 2,000 distributors in the south.

"We are trying to further develop our market in the south, and at the same time find new customers in the northern cities and provinces to double our market share to 15 per cent by the end of the year," said managing director Franck Bodin.

"We are installing an ISO 9001 2000 quality control system, and will steadily increase our staff to 250 by 2004."

The new factory, which brings the company's investment in Viet Nam to US$4 million, will employ about 100 people including fishery engineers who will share breeding tips with shrimp farmers.

The domestic market is clearly dominated by foreign companies such as Thailand's TB Group and Taiwan's Robest and UniPresident.

Thwarted by old technologies and limited production capacity, smaller Vietnamese companies such as KP 90, Thai My, C6 May and Bac Lieu vie for a limited market share of less than 7 per cent.