Here is a Vinamilk production line. — Photo Kim Phuong

HA NOI (Biz Hub) — The Viet Nam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk) signed a US$12.5 million contract to export powered milk for children during Gulfood 2016 between February 21 and February 25.

Gulfood 2016 was held at the Dubai World Trade Centre in the United Arab Emirates.

Vinamilk has been attending Gulfood since 2013. It brings key products like powered and condensed milk to Gulfood 2016 as a way to promote its image to the Middle East and African markets.

Gulfood 2016 is one of the world's largest annual food and hospitality show in the region with transactions worth billions of US dollars conducted. It is a place to link nations and suppliers with each other and open distribution channels for businesses in related industries.

Attending such a big fair is one of the ways for Vinamilk to further develop its business in the Middle East, aiming for potential markets such as Iraq, Syria and Yemen with an expected growth rate of 10 per cent per year in the region.

Expanding to world market

In a meeting with more than 70 foreign commercial counsellors and minister-counsellors in Viet Nam during their visit to the company's mega-factory in the southern Binh Duong Province on February 23, Vinamilk General Director Mai Kieu Lien said her company would focus on investment in expanding business in the world market.

Vinamilk has three factories in foreign countries and its products have been sold in 42 countries around the world as well, Lien said, and added that the firm had begun exporting powdered milk to the Middle East since 1998.

She said Vinamilk had targeted to push up exports of various milk products in the past so that its reached about US$242 million in turnover in 2015, increasing 800 per cent compared with that of 1998 and 77 per cent higher than 2014.

Vinamilk General Director Mai Kieu Lien (centre) introduces the firm's mega-factory in Binh Duong Province to commerial counselors and minister-counselors of foreign countries in Viet Nam. — Photo baodatviet.vn

The company has launched its strategy to invest abroad by co-operating with Miraka Limited Company to build a milk processing plant in New Zealand. The plant became operational in August 2011 and reached full capacity for production in August 2012. Vinamilk's total investment in Miraka has risen to more than $13 million, and its stake there has increased from 19.3 per cent to 22.8 per cent. In 2014, it also poured money into a business in Cambodia to supply milk to that market.

In 2013, Vinamilk invested $23 million in a joint venture in Cambodia with Angkor Dairy Products and spent $7 million on a 70 per cent stake in Driftwood Dairy Holding in California.

The Vinamilk official said that the firm had 13 factories nationwide. Of these, the mega factory in Binh Duong Province, put in use last year with an investment capital of VND2.4 trillion ($1.7 million), had a capacity of more than 400 million litres per year in the first phase. The factory's capacity would be increased to 800 million litres in the second phase this year, which was seen as a basic step to boost the firm's export and investment abroad.

Lien said the co-ordination and support from commercial counsellors and minister-counsellors in their countries would make an important contribution to bringing Viet Nam's milk products with high-quality and competitive prices to the world market.

In 2015, Vinamilk earned over VND40.2 trillion in revenue, up 15 per cent compared with 2014. Of these, the firm sent VND3.9 trillion to the State budget, a year-on-year increase of 12 per cent. — VNS