Swine fever surge in Vietnam highlights opportunities for industrial pork producers

Business Times

2 days ago

[HO CHI MINH CITY] Vietnam's ongoing battle with African Swine Fever (ASF) is accelerating the country's push towards industrialised livestock operations, opening up new investment opportunities for industrial-scale pig farming companies.
Authorities noted that the resurgence of ASF in the past months was largely concentrated in smallholder farms, while large-scale farms have generally kept the disease at bay by implementing strict biosecurity measures and proactively vaccinating their herds.
Vietnam, South-east Asia's top pork producer and the world's sixth largest, had a surge in ASF cases in July, with the number of outbreaks jumping 2.5 times month on month to the highest level since the beginning of the year.
In the first seven months of 2025, 978 ASF outbreaks were reported across 33 of Vietnam's 34 cities and provinces, leading to the death and culling of more than 102,755 infected pigs, up 53.3 per cent from a year ago.
This comes despite the commercial roll-out of Vietnam's two home-grown vaccines since July 2023 – the world's first for the viral and deadly swine virus.
However, vaccine adoption has remained limited among smallholder farms due to cost and efficacy concerns, as well as a lack of government support financially and educationally.
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The 'surge in AFS highlights existing biosecurity gaps in Vietnam's pork sector', BMI analysts wrote in a note on Aug 11.
'The growth of industrial players with greater financial capacity to invest in biosecurity...will help Vietnam's pork industry better manage ASF and other disease risks that have challenged the sector over the past decade,' they added.
ASF-related supply disruptions have also benefited large-scale players, which posted strong revenue in the second quarter thanks to high average pork prices, VNDirect analysts stated in a recent note on Jul 28.
They added that while the continued spread of AFS significantly impacted production among small-scale farmers, it further strengthened the position of large-scale, vertically integrated producers.
A report from the Department of Livestock Production in August 2024 showed that smallholder farms account for roughly 35-40 per cent of Vietnam's total pork output.
The number of such operations had gradually declined by 5-7 per cent annually over the previous five years while enterprises that have received foreign investments had become dominant market players, the report noted.
'We expect government policies to drive consolidation in Vietnam's pork sector,' BMI analysts stated, noting that small-scale farms will continue to decline as industrial producers come to dominate.
'Vietnam's ongoing industrial transition presents significant investment opportunities,' they added.
In January 2025, the Vietnamese government began enforcing specific provisions of the 2018 Law on Livestock, which prohibit animal husbandry in urban and residential areas, and are expected to trigger a profound reform of the livestock industry.
'This regulation will force some small-scale livestock households to cease operations if they are unable to relocate, leading to a reduced supply,' analysts at Tien Phong Securities wrote in a note. 'This presents a major opportunity for large-scale livestock enterprises to expand their market share.'
One example is the recent proposal by domestic livestock firm BAF Vietnam and its partner, Muyuan Group – the world's largest pig producer based in China – to build a high-tech, multi-storey indoor pig farming complex in the southern province of Tay Ninh.
The facility, inspired by the Chinese model, is expected to produce 1.6 million commercial pigs annually, with a total investment of more than 12 trillion dong (S$588 million).
Vietnam is expected to produce 3.8 million tonnes of pork in 2025, a 3 per cent increase from the previous year, indicated a forecast by the United States Department of Agriculture.
Despite the AFS outbreaks, the country's total pig herd reached over 30 million as at end-July 2025, up 2.1 per cent year on year.
With projected pork consumption of 3.9 million tonnes in 2025, Vietnam also ranks as the second-largest pork consumer in Asia, trailing only China, and the fourth largest globally.
The country is also actively working to boost its livestock exports to Singapore, which imported about US$1.1 billion of meat and edible offal in 2023, mainly from Brazil and Australia, indicated the United Nations Comtrade database.
Earlier this year, the Singapore Food Agency officially approved the import of several livestock products from Vietnam, including canned and sterilised poultry, eggs and meat (excluding beef) from several producers.
The city-state's market opening to more Vietnamese meat and egg products is expected to boost Vietnam's livestock exports, which generated more than US$533 million in revenue last year, up 6.5 per cent from the preceding year.