Viet Uc to build its first shrimp processing plant next year

Vietnam’s leading supplier of shrimp postlarvae, Viet Uc Seafood, now plans to become a shrimp exporter, with its first processing plant being constructed in the Mekong Delta next year.

Construction at the project in Bac Lieu Province will begin in early 2020, a company’s spokeswoman told SeafoodSource this week, adding that the site is already ready for the construction activities.

She did not say when the plant is expected to become operational.

“It will be the most modern processing plant in the region,” she said. The capacity in the first years will be between 5,000-10,000 metric tons (MT) per year, which will be gradually be raised to meet higher demand from buyers.

Material for the plant will come from Viet Uc’s own farms, which are expected to produce 10,000 MT next year. The company has three main farming areas of more than 1,000 hectares in the Bac Lieu, Binh Dinh, and Quang Ninh provinces. Many more ponds in Bac Lieu are being built through the end of this year, the spokeswoman said.

Viet Uc has secured Best Aquaculture Practices and Aquaculture Stewardship Council certificates for its breeding and farming areas. In October last year, Vietnam’s Department of Animal Health decided to accredit Viet Uc’s breeding farm in Bac Lieu as a disease-free shrimp facility that meets standards recommended by World Organization for Animal Health, she said.

The company announced on 11 November, 2017, that it successfully produced broodstock shrimp after years of research efforts, and it remains the only Vietnamese company that produces shrimp broodstock, with Vietnam’s other shrimp-farming firms importing broodstock from the United States, Singapore, and Thailand. Viet Uc sold more than 16 billion postlarvae last year, accounting for nearly 27 percent of the total supply of around 60 billion postlarvae in Vietnam, the company’s controlling director, Vu Duc Tri, told SeafoodSource in February.

Viet Uc operates nine hatchery facilities across the country’s southern, central and northern regions.