Vietnam: Ministry of Industry will reassess the country’s brewery production capacity

The Vietnamese Ministry of Industry has asked local peoples’ committees to report to the ministry about the liquor and brewery production and distribution in the localities. The reports will help assess the current situation of brewery production, which serves industry development programming, VietnamNet released November 02.

The localities will have to report about the number of liquor and brewery companies and establishments, including the private workshops which brew wine manually. In addition, the localities will also have to name the product items, and report about industrial value, turnover, profit and average income of workers.

In 2005, Vietnam produced some 1.500 million litres of beer.

By the end of 2004, Vietnam had 329 brewery establishments which had the designed capacity of 1.737mil litres, 72 alcohol producing establishments, not including private workshops, with the capacity of 103mil litres.

There are 50 operational foreign invested enterprises in the industry which have the registered capital of US$1.324 million, including 25 100% foreign owned projects (US$622 million) and 24 joint ventures (US$702.69 million), and a joint business, producing bottled mineral water. The foreign invested workshops are now just running at 17% of the designed capacity.

The workshops are located in 49 provinces nationwide, but they are mostly seen in the south-eastern region, the central region and in the Red River Delta. The biggest brewery plants are situated in HCM City, which account for 23.2% of the total beer output, Hanoi (13.44%), Hai Phong (7.47%), Ha Tay (6.1%), Tien Giang (3.79%), Hue City (3.05%) and Da Nang (2.83%).

The statistics showed that 19 of the existing brewery plants can produce 200,000 hl and more a year, 15 plants have the capacity of more than 150,000 hl, while 268 establishments can put out 10,000 hl a year.

The big brewery plants which have the designed capacity of more than 1 million hl a year all are using advanced technologies imported from developed countries, including Germany, the US or Italy. Meanwhile, the small workshops are now using out-of-date technologies which provide the products unable to meet the requirements on food hygiene.

By 2004, Vietnam had 72 establishments producing industrial alcohol with the total capacity of 1.03 million hl a year.

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