Vietnam becomes 8th biggest animal feed producer in 2022

Vietnam produced 26.72 million metric tons of animal feed in 2022, up 27.72% year-on-year, becoming the eighth biggest producer in the world, according to the U.S.-based animal feed company Alltech's Agri-Food Outlook 2023 report.

In its survey featuring 28,000 feed mills in 142 countries, Alltech estimated the global feed volume at 1.266 billion metric tons in 2022, down 0.42% year-on-year.

The 27.72% growth was the highest among the top 10, helping Vietnam crowd out Turkey. Meanwhile, Spain’s 12.85% reduction was the biggest decrease in the top 10. China and the U.S. topped the list with output of 260.74 and 240.4 million tons, respectively.

Vietnam’s animal husbandry sector attracted 81 foreign direct investments with total registered capital of $2.2 billion as of the end of Q3/2022, Foreign Investment Agency data shows. Those projects focus on animal feed, slaughtering and processing, environmental treatment, farming, and others, said Tong Xuan Chinh, deputy chief of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's Department of Livestock Production.

The animal feed market is dominated by foreign players. Out of 237 animal feed factories in Vietnam, 61 foreign-invested ones, or 25.7% of the total, accounted for 60% of national sales, according to Nguyen Duy Hoan, a lecturer from the Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry.

Hoan told local press on Wednesday that Vietnam’s advantages for animal feed investment include political stability, stable exchange rate, and stable macroeconomic situation. Besides, the market is growing fast with the country’s population approaching 100 million and the global figure exceeding eight billion, while the country is the gateway for many markets thanks to 15 signed free trade agreements.

Norwegian major Skretting, the world’s largest maker of feed for farmed fish, inaugurated its second Vietnam factory with an annual capacity of 100,000 tons last November. The $24 million state-of-the-art facility, located in Long An province bordering Ho Chi Minh City, enables Skretting’s effective feed supply to farming provinces in Vietnam's Mekong Delta and beyond, the giant said.

Dutch agribusiness De Heus Animal Nutrition opened its first Asian animal feed premix plant worth VND200 billion ($8.04 million) in the southern province of Dong Nai in November 2022. The 52,200-square-meter factory, located in 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 output of the husbandry sector in Vietnam in 2022 featured 4.43 million tons of pork, up 5.9% year-on-year; 2.03 million tons of poultry meat, up 4.5%; 122,800 tons of buffalo meat, up 1.6%; 474,300 tons of beef, up 3.5%; 18.3 billion eggs, up 4.4%; and 1.28 million tons of milk, up 10.2%, the General Statistics Office reported.