C.P. Vietnam starts construction of shrimp farm factory in Mekong Delta

C.P. Vietnam, a subsidiary of Thai conglomerate C.P. Group, kicked off the construction of a 4.3-hectare shrimp farm factory in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre on Saturday.

The high-tech plant, under Advanced Aquaculture Vietnam Company Limited, is set to complete on October 25, with an annual capacity of 1.1 billion shrimp seeds.

With eight branches across Vietnam, Advanced Aquaculture Vietnam Company Limited, part of C.P. Group in Vietnam, currently supplies tens of billions of shrimp eggs.

The new factory aims to apply modern technologies to bring about eco-friendly and high-quality products for the sustainable growth of Vietnam’s aquaculture sector, C.P. Vietnam executive vice president Adisak Torsakul said at the ceremony.

Since its entry in 1993, C.P. Vietnam has become the biggest firm in the agricutlture-food sector in Vietnam with over 30,000 staff, according to the company’s executive.

Last October, C.P. Vietnam shipped its first lot of processed chicken to Japan after meeting all food safety and quarantine requirements of the demanding market. The first shipment was 33.6 tons of processed chicken, the firm said. The shipped products were from the its plant in the southern province of Binh Phuoc, which the Thai giant says is Southeast Asia’s largest chicken processing facility with an initial investment of $250 million.

Vietnam’s aquaculture output reached 9.03 million tons in 2022, up 2.7%, including 1.23 million tons of shrimp, up 7.2%, according to the General Statistics Office. Shrimp is also a key export product of Vietnam’s agriculture, with revenue of over $4.3 billion last year, only behind wood and wooden products with $10.92 billion.

Vietnam’s agriculture and related service and processing sectors have so far attracted nearly 2,000 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects with registered capital of $20 billion, or 5.7% of the total number of projects and 4.3% of the capital, according to Nguyen Do Anh Tuan, head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's international cooperation department. Notable names include Nestle, De Heus, CJ, C.P., and New Hope, he added while reviewing international cooperation in agriculture.