New Zealand is Vietnam’s largest milk supplier in 2020

Vietnam spent over US$ 1billion importing milk and dairy products in 2020. Most of the imported milk and dairy products to the country last year were from New Zealand.

According to the General Department of Customs, Vietnam’s import revenue of milk and dairy products last year was US$ 1.048 billion, an increase of 0.1 per cent compared with that of 2019.

Among imported milk and dairy products to Vietnam, powdered milk has the biggest import value.

New Zealand was Vietnam’s largest milk supplier last year as imports from Newzealand reached US$ 286 million, accounting for over 27% of the total import turnover of this commodity group of the country.

US was the second-largest milk supplier to Vietnam with import value reaching US$173 million or 16 per cent of total milk import turnover of Vietnam.

Other major milk exporters to Vietnam last year were Malaysia with the import value of US$ 66 million, Thailand US$ 62 million and Japan US$61.7 million.

Some EU countries were also exporting milk to Vietnam including Germany (US$42 million), Netherland (US$ 39 million), Ireland (US$ 33 million) and France (US$31 million). For the first ten months of last year, milk import turnover from EU to Vietnam reached US$ 170.1 million, accounting for 19 per cent of total share market and seeing an increase of 3.9 per cent compared with that of the same period in 2019.

The Europe-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) is expected to boost the milk export from EU to Vietnam in coming time.

Under the EVFTA, import taxes for milk and dairy products including non-condensing milk/creamers, unsweetened milk/creamers or those containing a natural ingredient of milk from EU to Vietnam would be regularly decreased from 5 per cent to 0-3.5 per cent. Decreased import taxes will affect Vietnam’s milk imports.

In terms of kinds of milk, powdered milk was most imported into Vietnam. In the first ten months of last year, Vietnam imported powdered milk worth US$ 289.5 million, a decline of 8.9 per cent compared with that of the same period of 2019.

The import of skimmed powdered milk ranked the second with a total import value of US$ 231.5 million, an increase of 17.4 per cent compared with that of the same period of 2019. The import value of full cream powdered milk increased 16.2 per cent, reaching US$ 123.8 million.

Other kinds of imported milk and dairy products saw positive growths last year, for examples, UHT milk import value reached US$ 49.9 million, 64.3 per cent higher than that of 2019, food powder import value increased 38.6 per cent, yogurt 19.6 per cent.

However, import values of some other products declined, for examples, sweetened condensed milk 46.2 per cent, Anhydrous butterfat 25.6 per cent and butter 22.5 per cent.