Two Korean-Thai dairy products make Vietnam debut

Two food supplements made by a collaboration of leading South Korean confectioner Orion and Thailand’s top dairy firm Dutch Mill have made their debut in Vietnam’s dairy market.

In a statement on Tuesday, Orion Vina, the Vietnamese subsidiary of Orion, introduced to the local market the two new products – Choco IQ barley milk and ProYo! Yogurt – that it said were food supplements.

Orion entered Vietnam in 1995 with one of its most famous products - Chocopie. The firm expanded with various other pies, snacks, biscuits, gum and candies. Meanwhile, Dutch Mill, established in 1984, is well known as the top diary firm in Thailand with 70% of the market share there.

Orion recorded after-tax profits of 16.97 billion won ($12.82 million) on sales revenues of 105.34 billion won ($79.6 million) from its Vietnam operations in the first quarter of this year. The firm said its Vietnam net income inched down 0.2% year-on-year while sales revenue went up 2.8% thanks to the late January holiday season.

Vietnam’s dairy market recorded total revenues of VND113.7 trillion in 2020 ($4.79 billion) and VND119.3 trillion ($5.03 billion) in 2021, despite negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Vietnam Dairy Association (VDA) reported. Dairy consumption in Vietnam was about 27 liters per head per year, the association added, expecting the figure to grow 7-8% annually in the coming years.

Meanwhile, the General Statistics Office (GSO) reported that Vietnam’s fresh milk output was 1,050 million liters in the first seven months of this year, up 6% year-on-year; while that of milk powder was 85,000 tons, down 0.9% year-on-year.