Thai giant CP's Vietnam revenue falls 17% in 2025, weakest in 5 years

Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF) recorded revenue of THB101.34 billion ($3.22 billion) from its Vietnam operations in 2025, down 17% year-on-year, according to its latest earnings report.

The figure marks the lowest level since the pandemic-hit year of 2020, when CPF first surpassed THB100 billion in annual revenue in Vietnam. The 2025 decline was also the steepest in a decade, following earlier contractions of 16% in 2017 and 7% in 2023.

The weak Vietnam performance weighed on CPF’s consolidated results, with total revenue slipping 2% to THB571.14 billion ($18.17 billion). Vietnam was the group’s only major market to post a revenue contraction last year.

In terms of products, the farming business, including animal breeding, live animals, and processed meat and eggs, was the biggest cash earner in Vietnam with THB67.56 billion ($2.15 billion), down 19% year-on-year.

It was followed by animal feed with THB25.62 billion ($815.32 million), down 15%. Food recorded a decline rate of 4%, reaching THB8.16 billion ($259.69 million).

CPF attributed the weak performance in Vietnam primarily to the appreciation of the Thai baht, which negatively affected the translation of financial results from overseas operations.

Despite the slowdown, CPF remains one of Vietnam’s largest agrifood players. Its subsidiary C.P. Vietnam currently operates 21 factories, including eight animal feed plants, four fisheries feed plants, two fisheries processing plants, and seven meat processing plants.

It supplies more than 6.8 million pigs, 750 million eggs, and over 66 million broiler chickens annually, and exports more than 20,000 tons of processed seafood to markets including Australia, Japan, China, and Europe.

In retail, C.P. Vietnam runs three chains, C.P Fresh Shop, C.P Fresh Mart, and Five Star. Fresh Shop and Fresh Mart operate around 100 outlets selling fresh meat and processed foods, while the Five Star fried-chicken brand has roughly 1,000 locations nationwide.

Last June, C.P. Vietnam was hit by a food safety scandal after a social media account under the name Jonny Lieu (real name Lieu Quy Ngan), who claimed to be a former employee of the CP Fresh Shop in the southern province of Soc Trang province, accused the company leadership of ordering the sale of diseased pork and chicken.

C.P. Vietnam denied the allegations and asserted that its products complied with strict quality control procedures. While authoritarian inspections found no evidence of diseased meat in C.P. Vietnam stores, others uncovered violations, including expired safety certificates and a lack of proper documentation, at three outlets.

In early July, the Soc Trang Police's investigation agency announced that it had decided not to take legal proceedings against C.P. Vietnam following Lieu Quy Ngan's denunciation of the "crime". The reason, according to the agency, was that "the behavior does not show signs of a crime of violating food safety regulations as prescribed in Clause 2, Article 157 of the Criminal Code."