Thai food giant Charoen Pokphand posts $2.5 bln revenue in Vietnam in Jan-Sep

Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited (CPF) recorded a revenue of THB87.67 billion ($2.5 billion) from its Vietnam operations in the first nine months of this year, down 7% year-on-year.

By sector, livestock accounted for THB73.98 billion ($2.11 billion), down 5% year-on-year, while the figure for aquaculture was THB13.69 billion ($390.1 million), down 20%, according to the firm’s report.

In terms of products, the farming business, including animal breeding, live animals and processed meat and eggs, was the biggest cash earner with THB55.83 billion ($1.59 billion), down 7% year-on-year, accounting for 64% of the total.

It was followed by animal feed with THB26.05 billion ($742.2 million), down 9%, and 30% of the total. Food bucked the trend with growth of 3%, reaching THB5.79 billion ($165 million) and making up 6% of the total.

Vietnam was CPF’s second biggest market in the period regarding revenue with 20% of the total, only behind Thailand, its home market, with THB167 billion ($4.76 billion), up 1% year-on-year, or 38.1% of the total.

Another major market was China with THB29 billion ($826.1 million), up 9% and making up 6.6% of the total. The three markets accounted for 65% of CPF’s revenue from January-September.

Globally, CPF recorded a net revenue of THB438.53 billion ($12.49 billion) in the first nine months of this year, down 4% year-on-year. It posted a post-tax loss of THB5.33 billion ($151.8 million), versus a post-tax profit of THB12.16 billion ($199 million) in the same period of 2022.

Regarding the worse performance, especially in the third quarter of this year, CPF said the prices of swine dropped 26% year-on-year, partly due to oversupply resulting from illegal pork smuggling. Other reasons were high raw materials costs for animal feed production and high energy costs, and the macroeconomy negatively impacting purchasing power in some countries.

CPF started investing in Vietnam in 1993 with its first factory in the southern province of Dong Nai. In Vietnam, the firm now operates nine animal feed factories and three others for food processing.

In October 2022, CPF's subsidiary C.P Vietnam Corporation (CP 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 shipped products were from its plant in the southern province of Binh Phuoc.

In January, CP Vietnam kicked off the construction of a 4.3-hectare shrimp farm factory in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre. The new factory, with an annual capacity of 1.1 billion shrimp seeds, aims to apply modern technologies to bring about eco-friendly and high-quality products for the sustainable growth of Vietnam’s aquaculture sector.