ASEAN trade bloc offers opportunity to feed manufacturers

ASEAN trade bloc aims to secure opportunities for feed manufacturers inits Asia-Pacific member countries by focusing on feed production efficiency.

Economic growth rates and animal disease outbreaks aside, a group of Asian feed manufacturers has focused in 2014 on the impending arrival of a newly created single-market zone embracing 10 countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

This is so-called AEC economic community, formed by the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) trading bloc, is set to take effect during 2015. 

These members are (in alphabetical order): Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. At the level of feed manufacturing, the main players range from Indonesia and Thailand to Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Together they represent 60 million metric tons of feed production, according to an assessment by the D8-AFIC feed information center for developing countries.

ASEAN’s goal, investments

The united aim of ASEAN is to achieve a single, open market for the products and services of its member countries. Understanding the need for manufacturing and production efficiency to make this work in practice, the agribusiness industries in each country are currently investing to improve their ability to compete with regional rivals.  

Such investments are going into primary food production–as well as into feed manufacturing.

For example, an assessment for Indonesia has described investment requirements to increase domestic feed ingredient production and to upgrade processing facilities, as well as to improve the delivery of accurate and up-to-date feed data so that the industry has better documentation for its forward planning.

Poultry and pig diets currently remain the main activity by volume for ASEAN feed mills, but its attention is equally on improvement in the large and growing sector producing feeds for fish and shrimp.

Through its emerging role in the region that produces the largest share of the world’s compound feeds, the AEC economic community looks set to shape the future of feed within a significant group of Asia-Pacific countries. 

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