Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City brewery aims for export market; investors interested
Several American and Belgian companies had shown interest in buying some of The Saigon Beer Beverages Company (Sabeco)’s stakes, the Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai revealed in a statement last week. Sabeco started on December 25 the construction of a brewery with a capacity of 100 million litres per year in Ho Chi Minh City's suburban Cu Chi district, Vietnam News posted on December 30.
Sabeco runs factories in HCM City, Can Tho, Soc Trang, Phu Yen and Ha Tinh. It has produced 460 million litres of beer this year, mostly for domestic consumption. The nation is estimated to have consumed around 1.5 billion litres of the frothy beverage in 2005.
Prime Minister believes that the beer made at a new State-owned brewery being built in HCM City’s Cu Chi District could become an export. Vietnamese sources said that meantime, the premium-quality beer would meet domestic demand, contribute to State revenue, create jobs and have a positive impact on the re-arrangement of domestic industries, he said at a ground-breaking ceremony on Sunday.
The Sai Gon-Cu Chi Brewery, which belongs to the Saigon Beer, Alcohol and Beverage Corp (Sabeco), will cost an estimated VND1.9 trillion, or almost US$120 million, and is being built on 50ha in the Tay Bac (Northwest) Cu Chi Industrial Park.
It will use state-of-the-art German technology and construction is scheduled to take 18 months.
Capacity will be expanding from an initial 100 million litres to more than 1 billion litres a year in a second phase.
"The new brewery will help meet increasing domestic demand for beer, growing at around 15 per cent per annum," Nguyen Anh Dung, the company’s general director said at the event. Three contractors – Krones of Germany, Haskoning from the Netherlands and Coteccons from Viet Nam – will oversee the project, with the plant expected to begin production in June 2007.
Dung said Sabeco had targeted an annual production of one billion litres of beer by 2010.
The company’s marketing manager Le Thi Xuan Hoan told Viet Nam News that a higher output would allow for more sales abroad. Sabeco has already exported its products to the US, Japan and several northern European countries, but at modest volumes due to insufficient supply.
Torna
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