Cooperation Opportunities for Green Transformation in Vietnamese-Swiss Businesses

Nguyen Trong Nghia, general director of Sao Thai Duong Investment Joint Stock Company. Photo: VGP

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his wife, along with the high-ranking Vietnamese delegation, attended the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, and officially visited Hungary and Romania from January 16 to January 23.

On this occasion, Nguyen Trong Nghia, general director of Sao Thai Duong Investment Joint Stock Company, shared about cooperation opportunities between Vietnamese and Swiss businesses.

Sao Thai Duong is an enterprise operating in the field of agricultural production and high-tech industrial bamboo. The company is having important cooperation with Swiss partners.

From a business perspective, Nguyen Trong Nghia sees that Vietnam and Switzerland have a lot of potential for extensive cooperation based on each country’s strengths.

Switzerland is a country with the world’s leading developed economy with strengths in banking and finance, tourism-hotel services, medicine and pharmacy, machine manufacturing and in-depth research on high technology in many fields, such as precision mechanical manufacturing, green energy, and green transformation.

Switzerland’s strengths are also the areas in which Vietnam is in need of investment and development. Furthermore, Vietnam is a country with a large force of young, qualified workers with many resources for production, which is what Switzerland needs.

“Therefore, the two countries’ extensive cooperation will certainly benefit both in the short and long term,” Nguyen Trong Nghia said.

Potential for cooperation

Sharing about the business’s cooperation with Switzerland, Nguyen Trong Nghia said that since 2015, Sao Thai Duong is the largest company in Vietnam and Southeast Asia in production of industrial bamboo products (bamboo glue board, pressed bamboo, engineering bamboo).

The company’s products have been exported to Europe, North America, Japan, and have become raw materials for furniture production for many famous brands.

Since 2016, the company has worked with its Swiss partner, BARD AG-Switzerland’s leading high-end furniture company to research and develop plywood products from Vietnamese bamboo for home and interior construction.

This is a green product that meets the huge demand for the construction industry in the world’s green transition trend.

“Currently we are completing legal procedures, so that in 2024, we will start building the first OSB bamboo board product factory in Ba Thuoc district, Thanh Hoa province.

The factory will be built on an area of 26 hectares, with a total investment of VND3,000 billion (US$122.21 million), using modern, fully automated advanced technology from Europe,” Nguyen Trong Nghia said.

The factory has a minimum capacity of 225,000 m3/year, and will consume 1,000 tons of bamboo every day for poor people in the highlands, creating more than 3,000 jobs for bamboo farmers in the mountainous areas of northern Vietnam.

Photo: MOIT

The project also helps create a green product for the world in the construction and furniture industry, helping with green transformation and sustainable development of Vietnam’s bamboo industry.

It contributes to the goal of combating climate change in Vietnam and the world, aiming to balance CO2 emissions by 2050.

Nguyen Trong Nghia expressed great expectations for the Prime Minister of Vietnam to attend the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, and dialogues with Swiss businesses.

This will open up opportunities for cooperation for Vietnamese businesses with Swiss businesses in areas where Switzerland has strengths.