Belgian firm opens first chocolate factory in Vietnam

Belgium’s Grand-Place Group Tuesday began making chocolate at the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in Ho Chi Minh City’s neighboring Binh Duong Province.

Its US$3 million factory there will manufacture chocolate products like basic chocolate bars, and products for ice cream, cookies and cake decoration.

“The factory’s current daily average capacity is about 10 tons and we plan to reach full production capacity of more than 3,000 tons by the end of 2009,” Grand-Place Vietnam’s General Director Gricha Safarian said. Next year its capacity will double to 6,000 tons.

More than 80 percent of its output will be sold in Vietnam, with the rest exported to North America, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Cambodia.”

Grand-Place plans to open another factory in 2011 in Bac Ninh Industrial Park near Hanoi and a third in the Mekong Delta after five or six years to process cocoa supplied by farms in Ben Tre and Dak Lak provinces.

The Belgian company came to the country in 1993 with a representative office but now has four sales offices in Hanoi, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho besides the new factory.

Vinh Bao

Thanh Nien

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