Grobest, CP Foods, and Skretting are competing for market share in Vietnam through the propagation of proprietary shrimp-farming systems.
During the 2023 Shrimp Summit, hosted by The Center for Responsible Seafood in Ho Chi Minh City from 24 to 26 July, the multinational shrimp feed manufacturers, which are dominant players in Vietnam’s shrimp feed sector, competed to sell farmers the benefits their models.
Besides being a major aquafood producer and supplier, Taiwan-based Grobest offers specialized consulting services for farm design and management, including upgrading existing farms and ponds for customers as well as offering assistance in establishing new farms.
At the summit, Grobest touted its GROFARM model as “a total solution to profitable intensive shrimp farming in challenging environment … an open platform that brings together key stakeholders of the industry, from farmers to hatcheries and suppliers of equipment and services.”
Since the introduction of GROFARM in Vietnam in 2021, it has been implemented at more than 600 shrimp farms, “with an impressive success rate of up to 82.9 percent after three years of trial,” Grobest said in a press release.
The GROFARM approach emphasizes the importance of selecting top-quality postlarvae takes into account regional variations in seasons and tailors its strategies to meet farms’ specific requirements. It said the GROFARM model relies on an optimized feeding program that incorporates functional feeds to strengthen shrimp immunity and promote growth. Additionally, Grobest offers a “Mobile Lab” service that conducts on-site evaluations of shrimp health and water quality to promptly address any issues that may arise, to minimize production costs per kilogram, and simultaneously maximize overall crop profitability, Grobest said.
On a tour of Minh Phu's Intensive Tank Farm, a Grobest Vietnam partner, Grobest Vietnam Technical Service Head Le Van Khoa highlighted the model's value and benefits.
"Through cost reduction in shrimp farming and enhancing the competitiveness of Vietnamese shrimp, even against major markets like Ecuador and India, GROFARM not only ensures sustainable livelihoods for Vietnamese shrimp farmers but also demonstrates Grobest's commitment to a sustainable supply of clean, high-quality shrimp and profitable returns for the industry,” Khoa said. “This is expected to position the Vietnamese shrimp industry to regain its former prominence in the international market."
Also at the Shrimp Summit. CP Vietnam, a subsidiary of Thai food giant Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF), advertised its farming model, which it has been offering to Vietnamese farmers since 2015. The CPF-Combine model focuses on maintaining a clean farming environment for shrimp and offers a biogas waste treatment system, which helps solve pollution issues caused by waste from shrimp ponds and provides an energy source to power farming operations.
As of July 2020, about 4,000 ponds across Vietnam have applied the CPF-Combine model, the company estimated. CP Vietnam also offers technical support to farmers regarding postlarvae selection, feed, and farm management from the design stage through harvesting. Citing an instance of a farmer in the Tra Vinh Province in the Mekong Delta applying the CPF-Combine model for his seven shrimp ponds in the first crop of 2023, CP said shrimp at five of the ponds achieved a size of between 30 and 32 counts per kilogram.
Norway-based Skretting launched SUCCESS, its shrimp-farming model, in Vietnam in 2019, which includes a complete set of procedures applied at the pond preparation, stocking, and harvest stages, which farmers can adjust to suit a variety of terrain and investment capacities.
Skretting said SUCCESS has helped Vietnamese farmers improve their profitability by 30 percent to 40 percent compared to traditional models, including an 8 percent savings on production costs compared to intensive and semi-intensive farming models. The average survival rate in SUCCESS systems implemented in Vietnam is around 90 percent and the average growth rate is 30 percent above traditional models, it said.
Even though Vietnam’s shrimp sector is struggling in 2023, the global aquafeed sector continues to battle fiercely over the Southeast Asian nation. CP Vietnam, with a market share of 22 percent; Grobest Vietnam, a unit of the Taiwanese firm Grobest, also with 22 percent; Sheng Long Biotech, a subsidiary of China’s Guangdong Haid, with 14 percent; Taiwanese Uni-President, with 11 percent; and China-based Tongwei with 8 percent. And Skretting, Cargill, De Heus, and BioMar have continued to make investments in Vietnam’s shrimp feed industry, with a few of these companies venturing into breeding and processing, Shrimp Analyst Willem van der Pjil said on his Shrimp Insights blog in December 2022.
The Shrimp Summit provided an effective opportunity for these multinational feed manufacturers to attain a bigger piece of Vietnam’s shrimp feed industry.
“While we’re always quick to say that the shrimp industry is very fragmented, the feed segment differs from other segments of the value chain. In countries like Ecuador and Vietnam, the shrimp feed manufacturing segment is already very much consolidated and on its way to consolidate even further over the next couple of years,” he said. “As consolidation increases, a relatively small number of global and regional players from Europe, the U.S., and Asia is slowly strengthening its grip on the industry as a whole.”
Photo courtesy of Grobest
