Hi-tech farming: new target for corporations

Large corporations have announced investments in 25 agriculture investment projects with total capital of VND27 trillion.

Tens of trillions of dong have been poured into hi-tech farming projects

Among the huge projects, Ba Huan JSC spent more than VND1 trillion to set up a closed production chain from farm to table for egg production. VinaCapital Vietnam Opportunity Fund (VOF) recently became a strategic shareholder of Ba Huan JSC after pouring $32.5 million into the enterprise. 

The money will be used to restructure the enterprise and improve the production capacity of core business fields.

After six years of investment in agriculture, Minh Hung Group, one of the 500 largest private Vietnamese companies, has announced that it will build a HPP (high pressure processing) food factory, capitalized at VND500 billion in Long An province. 

The project, with participation of two foreign partners MHEnviron (Canada) and Avure Technologies, is expected to become operational by 2019.

Large corporations have announced investments in 25 agriculture investment projects with total capital of VND27 trillion.

According to Minh Hung Group’s chair Lam Dao Hung, the company will spend money on a storehouse system and post-harvesting technologies for storing fruit in the high harvesting season to save costs.

Meanwhile, Hoa Phat Group, a big steel manufacturer, in early 2018 kicked off a project on breeding egg-laying hens, expected to provide 20 million eggs. 

Prior to that, it poured money into an animal feed factory and a pig and cow farming project, though agriculture projects are now bringing only modest revenue to the group.

Thaco, an automobile manufacturer, recently inaugurated an agricultural machinery factory capitalized at VND500 billion. In the immediate time, the factory will churn out farm tractors with capacity from 18 HP to 120 HP, harvesters, and farming equipment.

Speaking at an event held in HCMC recently, Phung Duc Tien, deputy chair of the National Assembly’s Science, Technology and Environment Committee, said that Vietnam, which is undergoing economic restructuring, considers agricultural production an important ‘pillar’ of the economy.

Vietnam reaped big achievements in agriculture in 2017 with farm exports worth $36.3 billion. Agricultural production is forecast to continue growing in 2018 with export turnover of farm, forestry and seafood products reaching $6.1 billion so far this year, an increase of 30 percent over the same period last year.

Tien cited reports as saying that total investment capital in agriculture has increased sharply, though the state’s investments have not risen in comparison with the previous years. 

The 25 large projects developed by big corporations alone have attracted VND27 trillion worth of investment capital.

VinEco, a subsidiary of Vingroup, a real estate developer, has developed 14 hi-tech farms throughout the country in the last two years.