Dutch firm invests in local feed factory
By Myat Noe Oo | Monday, 03 October 2016
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After five years of importing Vietnamese products into Myanmar, Dutch animal feed company De Heus has opened a factory in Myanmar to start producing for the local market directly.
Farmers plough the land with cows in Nay Pyi Taw.EPA
The firm is starting with a 10 million euro (K14 billion; US$11.2 million) foreign direct investment and aims to produce 240,000 tonnes of feed a year to start with, said Johan van den Ban, the company’s managing director in Myanmar.
“We’ll produce more according to local demand,” he added.
The firm has been selling animal nutrition products in Myanmar for the last five years, but imported them from its Vietnam operations. In response to local demand and a strong potential market, De Heus decided the time was right for a local Myanmar facility.
De Hues held an opening ceremony for the new factory, which is based in the Myaungtaga industrial zone in Yangon region’s Hmawbi township, on October 1. Feed produced at the factory will be distributed across the whole of Myanmar, Mr van den Ban said.
The location near the Hlaing River will allow the firm to ship in raw materials and ship out finished products at low cost, said U Aye Maung Zan, sales manager from De Heus Myanmar.
“Our company relies on the river in every country with a [De Heus] factory,” he said. “We reduce transportation costs so we can also reduce in the price of our products.”
A reliance on high-tech machinery means that the factory will only employ 22 people, U Thu Hla Zaw, production supervisor at De Heus Myanmar said.
De Heus, which was founded in 1911, is headquartered in the Netherlands but has factories in more than 50 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin American.
