Leading Vietnamese pangasius exporter Vinh Hoan scored two big wins in September.
First, the Cao Lanh City, Vietnam-based firm’s Lucky Bag dumplings won the Best New Product award at the 2024 Seafood Excellence Asia competition, presented at Seafood Expo Asia on 4 September.
Then, a U.S. Department of Commerce investigation decided Vinh Hoan will not be subject to antidumping duties for frozen pangasius fillets.
The wins were celebrated by the company as evidence its commitment to new business segments and honest business practices are paying off, according to Vinh Hoan Sales Director Hoa Truong.
“The Lucky Bag product is made from pangasius surimi, which is another new business for us,” Truong told SeafoodSource at Seafood Expo Asia. “They are part of our strategy to fully optimize the company’s pangasius value chain and to utilize our wider footprint as we move from changing our vision from being a seafood company to a food company.”
Even though 2023 was a difficult year for the company, as inflation weakened demand for pangasius in the U.S. – Vinh Hoan’s biggest market – and worldwide, the company’s widening of its vision beyond whitefish has turned out to be a wise move, Truong said.
“We started not with pangasius but with looking around in our home province and seeing what grows locally, and that was seafood,” Truong said. “As we have grown bigger, we have taken on other local products, and now we want to be creative and find new markets and new combinations of these products to get more people interested in them.”
In 2015, it invested in a collagen production plant that brought USD 31 million (EUR 27.8 million) in revenue for the company in 2023.
In 2020, Vinh Hoan formed a subsidiary in Singapore, Vinh Technology, to support its import and export operations and to explore opportunities for food sector trading.
In 2021, Vinh Hoan formed Thanh Ngoc Agriculture Food Co. (TNG Foods) in An Nhon, Vietnam, which produces freeze-dried and frozen tropical fruits and vegetables. The same year, it purchased Sa Giang Import and Export Corp., which produces ready-to-eat foods such as shrimp crackers and instant noodles.
And, earlier in 2024, it completed the installation of a surimi raw material production line it installed at its processing facility in Cao Lanh City, Vietnam, in 2023. The line gives Vinh Hoan an annual capacity of producing 5,000 metric tons of pangasius surimi, which is used in the wrappers for its Lucky Bag dumplings and in many of its other new innovations, such as a line of pangasius protein noodles, including its new Protein Pho Fusion product.
“The main market includes Asian countries and the Asian community in the U.S. and Europe,” Vinh Hoan said in a press release. “With noodle products that come with steamed pangasius meat and white-leg shrimp, Vinh Hoan hopes to capture the needs of health-conscious consumers.”
Vinh Hoan is also branching into …
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