Loc Troi Group has reported huge revenue of VND4 trillion in 2015. Though 2015 was a difficult year for agricultural production because of drought and saline intrusion in many areas, Loc Troi still gained impressive business results. 

 

The group reported net revenue of VND7.856 trillion in the year and post-tax profit of VND319 billion. The revenue from pesticide sales was very encouraging at VND4.1 trillion, VND347 billion a month.

 

But Loc Troi is not alone. HAI Agrochem also can earns trillions of dong a year from pesticide sale. The company’s audited finance report showed that it had revenue of VND1.819 trillion and made a pretax profit of VND96.3 billion in 2015, witnessing sharp growth rates of 64.3 percent and 50.2 percent, respectively, compared with 2014. These included VND1.2 trillion revenue from pesticide sales.

 

With a huge consumption level of 50,000 tons a year, the Vietnamese plant protection product market is a fertile area for domestic and foreign companies.

Meanwhile, the Sai Gon Plant Protection JSC (SPC) reported that it could earn VND3 billion in profit form the sale of pesticide, fertilizer and chemicals in 2015.

 

The Vietnamese pesticide product market is dominated by Chinese imports. According to the General Department of Customs (GDC), in the first five months of the year, Vietnam imported $140 million, or VND3.080 trillion worth of pesticide products from the market, or VND616 billion a month.

 

In May alone, the amount of money spent to buy Chinese pesticide products reached $27 million. Pesticides was were of the 10 biggest import items from China in the month.

 

In the last three years, Vietnam spent hundreds of millions of dollars to import Chinese pesticides. The figures were $411 million in 2014 and $376 million in 2015.

 

However, according to the Plant Protection Agency, the figures are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’. The real import volume from China is much higher, if counting smuggled products.

 

Not only importers and traders, chemicals manufacturers which provide materials to process pesticides can obtain revenue of hundreds of billions of dong a year.

 

PetroVietnam Fertilizer and Chemicals Corporation, for example, earned VND271.4 billion from the sale of ammonia, while PVCFC earned VND112.8 billion from the chemical.

 

As the pesticide market has become more attractive, a lot of foreign companies have jumped on the bandwagon. Some of them have penetrated the market by supplying fertilizer and seedlings to farmers. 

 

Most recently, two companies from the US and Switzerland began selling seeds, fertilizer and herbicide to Vietnamese farmers in January 2016.