Japan’s Takesho Food & Ingredients Inc. will begin construction in January 2020 on a processing plant in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta that will make spices and food materials from shrimp byproducts to serve the food industry, The Saigon Times reported 26 December.
The project will cost USD 8 million (EUR 7.2 million) and will be located on an area of two hectares in Can Tho City.
In February 2018, the Japanese food producer signed a memorandum of understanding with Can Tho University to study ways of converting shrimp heads and shells into spices.
Takesho Chairman and Managing Director Toshinao Tanaka confirmed the collaboration with the university at a working session with the municipal government, adding that his company and the university were undertaking another study on byproducts of pangasius and on rice bran, the newspaper reported.
Can Tho University Vice President Le Viet Dung said failing to fully utilize local agricultural and seafood byproducts such as shrimp was “wasteful.” As part of the MoU, Takesho has delivered machinery worth over USD 1 million (EUR 894,383) to the Vietnamese university to serve its research activities.
A previous project undertaken by the university developed a method for extracting protein from shrimp heads to make spices and food materials. A Singaporean company, ranking fifth in the world in terms of ingredient and spice market share, agreed to purchase the outputs of the study, the Vietnam News Agency reported in August 2019.
Economic projections of annual sales from the processing of seafood byproducts in Vietnam place the potential market in the realm of USD 5 billion (EUR 4.47 billion), up from a current estimate of USD 275 million (EUR 246 million).
Vinh Hoan Collagen, a subsidiary of leading pangasius producer Vinh Hoan, annually produces up to 2,000 metric tons of collagen, which has a variety of medicinal and integrative health uses. According to Vinh Hoan Collagen CEO Vo Phu Duc, the company receives a price of up to USD 20.00 (EUR 18.00) per kilogram of its collagen, which is derived from pangasius byproducts – much higher than the USD 1.50 (EUR 1.34) per kilogram Vinh Hoan otherwise receives for its pangasius byproducts.
Photo courtesy of Yuliya Drazdovich/Shutterstock
