Vedan International Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed investment holding company that produces food additives for beverage production, instant noodles and monosodium glutamate (MSG), is looking to set up a subsidiary in Cambodia by the end of the year, according to a report in Taiwanese media.
The Taiwanese company hopes the Cambodian subsidiary would serve as a new base for operations to expand into the Thai and Lao markets, a company executive was quoted as saying on Saturday.
“It is Vedan’s goal to expand the firm’s reach from Vietnam to other Southeast Asian countries in the next few years,” executive director and CEO Yang Kun-Hsiang said.
Currently Vedan has two plants in mainland China and three plants in Vietnam, and claims to hold a 50 percent market share of MSG production in Vietnam. The company’s overall sales last year reached $327.6 million, mostly on sales in China.
Yang said the Asean Free Trade Agreement could significantly reduce tax expenses for expansion into the region as the company aggressively plans to increase its presence across Southeast Asia.
“We hope to increase sales contributions from Asean from nearly 20 percent to 35 percent within three years,” Yang said in the report, adding that diversification into Cambodia would help mitigate risk from being over-reliant on the saturated Vietnamese market.
According to its 2016 annual report, Vedan began importing an undisclosed amount of raw cassava materials from Cambodia for MSG production last year. The company turned gross profit of $79 million last year, a 30.2 percent increase from the previous year.
