Vietnam’s top pangasius company, Vinh Hoan, is moving ahead with its plans to expand its farming, processing, and hatchery capacity.
The company hopes to finalize construction at its farming area of 220 hectares in Long An province, located in the Mekong Delta, in two months, Vinh Hoan CEO Nguyen Ngo Vi Tam told SeafoodSource during seafood expo Vietfish 2019, which took place from 29 to 31 August in Ho Chi Minh City.
The farm in Long An includes a hatchery zone which will provide sufficient fingerlings for grow-out fish farms. This, together with the application of innovations to the process and machineries, will increase the self-supply ratio of Vinh Hoan by another 40 percent.
The company began construction at the Long An farm in April last year.
Construction at the hatchery zone has already been finished while the work on the grow-out fish farms will be completed in two months, said Tam.
Vinh Hoan is in process of expanding capacity at its Thanh Binh Dong Thap processing plants that it acquired in February 2017. The capacity is expected to be raised to about 200 metric tons (MT) per day by the end of this year and to between 270-300 MT per day in 2020, according to Tam.
The company announced on 29 August, 2018, that its board of directors had approved the formation of a new subsidiary called Vinh Phuoc Food Co. The subsidiary, to be located in Chau Thanh district in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap, has two farming areas of 70 hectares in total. Vinh Phuoc also has a processing plant with a capacity of 150 MT per day.
At present, Vinh Hoan is constructing a cold storage system and a line to produce fish oil and fish powder. Next year the company will consider if it will build another plant to produce fillets in Vinh Phuoc, said Tam.
The location of the new unit will enable it to expand farming areas near processing factories, minimize transport costs, and connect more easily with other facilities of the parent company in the region, Vinh Hoan has said.
Vinh Hoan in January this year announced the establishment of a hatchery complex at Vinh Hoa in An Giang Province as the supply of its fingerlings remains limited. The first phase of the project, spanning across 50 hectares, is expected to become operational in six months, CEO Tam said, adding that the second phase on another 100 hectares will be implemented based on the results of the first phase.
Photo by Toan Dao
