Intra-ASEAN dairy trade small
The nations of Southeast Asia have a vibrant dairy market. However, most of the local producers focus largely on their own market. We are seeing dairy trade between countries but these are mainly food ingredients or multinationals exporting baby food or other dairy products from their hubs such as in Singapore, Malaysia or the Philippines.
What we are seeing is the absence of a strong push by Southeast Asian dairy companies exporting their yoghurt, cheese and milk from for example Thailand into Malaysia or the Philippines into Indonesia. This excludes the flow of products from Thailand into neighbouring countries like Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos where the dairy market is still under developed.
However, this is slowly changing. We have seen examples of Indonesian dairy firms like PT Mulia Boga Raya (Prochiz) selling its cheese in Malaysia and the Philippines. Indonesia’s Japfa (Greenfields) exporting UHT milk, fresh milk and cheese to Singapore and cheese to Malaysia.
Vinamilk exports yoghurt to Thailand
In the past three months, Vietnam’s Vinamilk has been exporting its yoghurt into neighbouring Thailand. The Vinamilk yogurt is available in plain, less sugar and aloe vera variants, while the Vinamilk Susu yoghurt comes in two flavours including apple & banana. All these products are available at The Mall, Foodland and Lawson.
Vinamilk UHT milk next
Thailand-based Topmost Enterprise is the appointed distributor. The company aims to cover all distribution channels in the second quarter of 2017. The yoghurt is priced at THB 17-19, which is higher than other brands in the market and the reason to justify the high price is quality. Vinamilk UHT milk will be the next product to exported to Thailand, reported the Bangkok Post citing TopMost Enterprise Managing director Siwat Thamaratnothai.
Vinamilk enters Myanmar
Apart from Thailand, Vinamilk announced the entry into the Myanmar market in May 2016 in a partnership with Synchro World. Image above was taken from Vinamilk corporate website. The overseas push comes as Vinamilk aims to derive 50% of its total revenue from the overseas business in the coming five years.
The Vietnamese dairy giant opened a new dairy plant in Cambodia in May 2016. The new factory is capable of producing 19 million liters of milk, 64 million cups of yogurt and 80 million cans of condensed milk per year.
Regional ambition
F&N, another regional player now owned by ThaiBev, has plans to build a factory in Ayutthaya province, Thailand in the next few years to support growth in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. This comes as the capacity at the Oishi’s beverage plant is nearly full.
The regional ambition of F&N and Vinamilk will shape the regional dairy scene in future as companies search for growth spots with plenty of growth spots still untapped in the region.
