VietNamNet Bridge – Though cheese products are not popular in Vietnam, where people have not got used to dairy made products, the market still can gather the world’s leading cheese brands such as Fonterra Co-operative, Lactalis and Bel.

The world’s leading manufacturers still consider Vietnam an important market because they can see the great opportunities here. A report by Nielsen, a market survey firm, showed that the market had obtained the growth rate of 23 percent by the end of the third quarter of 2013 over the same period of 2012.

The growth rate has far exceeded the rate in 2004-2009 which was 5.3 percent per annum as reported by Datamoniter.

In late 2009, Lactalis, the French group which ranks the second in the world and the first in Europe in the dairy and cheese industry with 119 factories worldwide, after 10 years of penetrating the Vietnamese market, officially appointed Hoang Lan Group in HCM City as the distributor of dairy, butter and cheese products.

With the capability of distributing 500 tons of President brand cheese products every year in Vietnam, Hoang Lan group helped make Lactalis’ products more familiar to Vietnamese consumers. The French brand became the leading brand in Vietnam, though Bel’s products appeared in Vietnam tens of years ago already.

However, Datamoniter’s statistics showed that it is Fonterra Co-operative, not Lactalis, which was leading the Vietnamese cheese market in 2009 with 51.1 percent of the natural cheese market share.

Vinamilk, the Vietnamese leading dairy producer, also makes cheese products. However, Vinamilk’s 2012 finance report showed that cheese products, like ice cream, are not considered its strategic products in the medium term business strategy.

Vinamilk and other domestic dairy producers seemingly don’t intend to make heavy investment to develop the market segment.

Explaining this, Ho Tien Sy, an executive of Lantabrand, said the investment rate and production cost are relatively high, while the market demand is not really big. The main consumers of cheese products are children and the youth aged below 25. Therefore, despite the promising high profitability, Vietnamese investors still keep hesitant to invest in the sector.

In terms of the brand popularity, analysts believe that Bel, with four brands “Con bo cuoi” (smiling cow) Kiri, Babybel and Leerdammer is leading the market.

They said Bel has made a breakthrough to become the leader in the market over the last three years with 70 percent of the market share. Of the four brands, Con bo cuoi is the best-known brand to Vietnamese.

The analysts said Con bo cuoi has been chosen most by Vietnamese because of the Vietnamese habit. They don’t intend to use other products once they still feel satisfactory with the currently used products. Therefore, Con bo cuoi brand, which has been present in the country for many years, will still enjoy the advantages of the “pioneer” in the market.

Bel put its factory in the My Phuoc 3 Industrial Zone, capitalized at 5 million euro, into operation in late 2011 in order to satisfy the increasingly high demand in Vietnam and other South East Asian markets. This has helped Bel become very competitive in terms of product range and selling prices.

K. Chi