The two projects play an important role in the development of the city’s food processing industry in the 2021-2030 period. — VNA/VNS Photo
HO CHI MINH CITY: Ho Chi Minh City needs to develop a cold storage system and raw material storage areas for the food processing industry, the Food and Foodstuff Association of Ho Chi Minh City says.
The two projects play an important role in the development of the city’s food processing industry in the 2021-2030 period. The industry is among the four key industries that the city prioritises, it said.
Ly Kim Chi, chairwoman of the association, said the city currently has many cold storage units but they are at small scale and not that modern, so they do not meet all the requirements for cold storage.
The municipal government, therefore, has approved a cold storage system development project and assigned the city Department of Industry and Trade in collaboration with the association to deploy it, she said.
The cold storage units will have an average area of five to 10ha and be located in areas with convenient traffic and not too far from the city centre. They must be at international quality to store and preserve many groups of goods, including imported ones and locally produced products, she said.
“But we have not found an appropriate site for building the cold storage despite making intensive searches,” she said.
Funds for building the cold storage system are contributed by businesses in the industry.
The association did not ask the city government to fund the project, but wanted the city to have policies to support the industry to implement the project, she said.
Chi said a material storage area is very important to the food processing industry, adding that currently, material inputs for food processing firms in the city are mainly supplied by farmers in the south-west provinces.
Therefore, the industry needs to link with provinces to build stable material storage areas for each commodity, and instruct farmers to adopt certain requirements in their crop production to yield clean raw materials so firms can process products for export, she said. — Viet Nam News/ANN
