Century Bond Bhd (CBB) wants to position itself as a leading player in the Vietnamese packaging industry. Deputy managing director Loi Tuan Ee said for a start, the company planned to become a major supplier of cement paper bags there. Demand for the bags in the former French colony had been growing but domestic production could not cope up with it, he said. Loi said there were no independent cement paper bag producers in Vietnam at present, adding that the company would be in a good position to penetrate the market.
Loi said the existing cement producers in Vietnam produced most of the paper bags themselves but the capacity was insufficient, so they had to import the bags. He said there were eight cement producers in Vietnam which solely catered to local demand. “Vietnam needs 25Mt of cement this year, so a huge market is waiting for us there.’’ Loi said CBB’s Vietnamese plant would be commissioned in June with a capacity of 24 million paper bags yearly.
He said the company had invested about RM3mil in the 35,000-sq-ft plant at the Vietnam-Singapore industrial park in Ho Chi Minh City. He said the Vietnamese plant was the company’s first overseas venture, adding that this was part of a long-term strategy to strengthen its position in the region. “We’re now looking at venturing into Cambodia and Laos, probably in two to three years,” Loi said.
