Powerful newcomers stir up instant coffee market

With the stable growth rate of 8-10 percent per annum as reported by Vicofa, Vietnam’s instant coffee market is a lucrative market which deserves investments.

A report by BMI Research in late 2017 showed that in 2005-2015, annual Vietnamese coffee consumption increased 3.5 times from 0.43 kilograms per head to 1.38 kilograms. The figure is predicted to rise to 2.6 kilograms by 2021.

The lucrative instant coffee market is now in the hands of big players, including Vinacafe Bien Hoa, Nestle, Trung Nguyen, Ajinomoto and Phindeli.

However, analysts say that may change because of the appearance of new powerful players.

The newcomers are ‘rookies’ in the coffee market, but ‘veterans’ in their core business fields and have powerful financial resources. They have set up mills to make coffee for domestic consumption and for export as well.

Vinamit, a dry fruit processor, and Nutifood, a dairy producer, are two of them. Their fresh dry-cured coffee and fresh milk coffee are targeting foreign markets.

The newcomers are ‘rookies’ in the coffee market, but ‘veterans’ in their core business fields and have powerful financial resources. They have set up mills to make coffee for domestic consumption and for export as well.

Nutifood last August launched Nuticafe, a fresh iced milk coffee. Prior to that, Vinamit jumped on the bandwagon when introducing Espresso Coffee, while Nestle Vietnam launched Nescafe Dolce Gusto capsule.

A representative of Nutifood said iced milk coffee is favored by foreign travelers who buy it for gifts or use in their home countries. 

Nutifood’s long-term investment strategy includes developing more products and investing trillions of dong in agriculture and a high-quality coffee growing area in Dak Lak province.

Global Eyes from Taiwan has teamed up with Vietnamese Zonica JSC to introduce Café’bank in Vietnam, a product with extracts from medicinal herbs that help improve men’s physiological capacity and women’s hormones.

The product has relatively high retail prices as it is advertised as made of three valuable herbs Macca, Guarana and Tongkat Ali in a remedy developed by Taiwanese scientists for 15 years.

Nestcafe and G7 are two leading brands in PBI (popular brand index) in the instant coffee sector as reported last April by W&S which conducted a survey via Vinaresearch.

Regarding the advertisement coverage, consumers said they regularly saw ads of Nestcafe (39.2 percent), which left the other top 5 brands far behind, including G7 (22.2 percent), Vinacafe (16.7 percent) Wake up (10.3 percent) and Café Pho (8 percent).

To the question ‘Which instant coffee brand do you want to use most in the future?’ question, consumers said ‘G7’ (27.2 percent) and Nestcafe (25.2 percent).