De Heus opens first Asian animal feed premix plant in Vietnam

Dutch agribusiness De Heus Animal Nutrition has opened its first Asian animal feed premix plant worth VND200 billion ($8.04 million) in the southern province of Dong Nai.

The 52,200-square-meter factory, located in the Song May Industrial Park, Trang Bom district, features modern operating lines, frozen storage facilities and a VND100 billion ($4.02 million) materials warehouse. It has an annual designed capacity of 60,000 tons.

The factory, De Heus's seventh of its kind in the world, will provide vitamin and nutritional products, as part of the Dutch firm’s plans to become a top provider in Asia, Gabor Fluit, CEO Asia at De Heus, said at the launching ceremony Wednesday.

Premix is a powder mix of minerals, vitamins, amino acids and other nutrients, which can be added to animal feed.

Vietnam currently has 220 facilities making feed additives, including 15 producing premix. These facilities can fulfil only 15% of the demand of feed additives, estimated at 800,000 tons a year, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Phung Duc Tien said at the event.

De Heus, which entered Vietnam late 2008, operates 23 factories in the country, including 14 purchased from the Masan Group in late 2021. In the year to October 13, the Dutch firm had manufactured 10 million tons of animal feed in Vietnam, close to its target of 12 million tons this year.