Company looks to produce 300,000 hogs per year by 2021
New Hope Liuhe has begun stocking its first pig farm in Vietnam, according to a Reuters report.
New Hope Liuhe, China’s largest animal feed and poultry producer, is expected to populate the farm in Binh Phuoc with an expected inventory of 13,500 Hypor-breed sows produced by Hendrix Genetics by the first quarter of 2020. It looks to produce 300,000 hogs per year by 2021. The company also plans to build a feed mill on-site; it has eight other feed mills in Vietnam, which produced 700,000 tons of feed in 2018.
New Hope Liuhe has plans for two more hog farms in Vietnam and, after completion of those farms, could produce up to 700,000 hogs annually in the country.
In 2018, according to WATTAgNet’s Top Feed Companies database, New Hope Group produced 20 million metric tons of animal feed for pigs, poultry and aqua species.
According to Zhang Xiangjun, general manager of the farm, New Hope has a permit to produce food from its first farm in Vietnam and is researching establishment of a food processing company in the country.
African swine fever in Vietnam
New Hope is stocking and building its new pig farms in Vietnam, even as the deadly African swine fever (ASF) virus continues to spread. ASF has hit every region of Vietnam so far this year, and has led to the culling of about 5.6 million pigs.
Vietnam’s pig population in September 2019 was 19% below the year-earlier level, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Worst affected is the Red River Delta region in the north of the country, where the number of pigs is down by 38% over the same period.
ASF was first detected in Vietnam in February and, in early August, one outbreak was confirmed in the southern province of Binh Phuoc, where New Hope’s new farm is located. About 30 pigs were culled in the province after the ASF virus was detected.
