Oficials cut ribbon, opening FI 2015 in HCM City. — VNS Photo Thu Ngan

HCM CITY (Biz Hub) — Opportunities for business tie-ups and investment are on offer for food and foodstuff producers at the 2015 Food Ingredient (Fi) Viet Nam, which opened in HCM City on  May 20.

In its second edition this year, the three-day Fi has attracted more than 100 leading local, regional, and international exhibitors.

It is also a place for food and beverage professionals to look for new innovative ingredients, gain market insights, increase their business network and gain a competitive edge.

Ly Kim Chi, chairwoman of the HCM City Food and Foodstuff Association, said this was a good opportunity for Vietnamese companies to meet and compare notes with their foreign counterparts so that they could bolster their competitiveness.

Speaking to Viet Nam News, Huynh Hieu, deputy director of Golden Frog Flavor-Fragrance Manufacture Corporation, said the exhibition offered a chance to look for partners and widen export markets, especially for a company like his, which was one of the few in Viet Nam to produce food ingredients.

Dominated by foreign companies

Officials visit a booth at Fi 2015.  — VNS Photo Thu Ngan

Visiting the exhibition, it is easy to recognise the fact that Vietnamese firms lag behind their foreign rivals though the food ingredient industry has for years been a very promising market and the country has many vegetables that can be used to produce food additives and flavours.

According to UBM, the organiser of the exhibition, around 30 Vietnamese companies are participating and few of them produce food ingredients.

Most of them were importers, it said.

Prof Luu Duan, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Food Science and Technology, told Viet Nam News that Viet Nam imported more than 90 per cent of food ingredients.

A long time was needed to research and develop a reliable food ingredient, and Viet Nam as a developing country had not paid much attention to the sector, he said.

He explained that imported good ingredients have consistent quality and domestic players could not meet this demand, and so food producers were resigned to importing.

The industry would have the chance to develop once the country integrated further, he said.

An official from the Sai Gon Technology University said since Vietnamese companies lacked modern technologies and were plagued by raw material shortages their products had been unable to gain trust in the domestic market.

If they managed to meet the conditions, their price would be higher than that of imports, and that was why not many domestic companies produced food ingredients, she added.

Hieu said his company faced many challenges since it was the only producer of flavours in the country.

There was no support industry for food ingredients and his company had to import raw materials, he added. — VNS