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Success is a matter of self-belief

Source:Ringier Release Date:2012-07-16 474
Food & Beverage
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Visionary Tran Qui Thanh, founder of the Tan Hiep Phat Group, aims to make THP Asia's biggest producer of beverages and plastic packaging

TODAY is better than yesterday but not better than tomorrow," is the motto of the Tan Hiep Phat Group (THP), a Vietnamese beverage firm whose unbelievably swift development is a more orless accurate reflection of the country's economy has experienced in the last two decades. Founded as recently as 17 years ago, the family-owned THP is the largest vendor of soft drinks in Viet Nam, and as far as ready-to-drink teas and health drinks are concerned the absolute market leader.

Abhishek Shukla, the group's Technical Director

Abhishek Shukla, the group's Technical Director

"Fight! Fight! And be prepared to fight even harder!" This exhortation on the office door of the company's founder, Dr Tran Qui Thanh, vividly illuminates the way in which the Vietnamese beverage industry's most successful entrepreneur tackles business.

"When we're convinced of our success in our minds, we will be successful," he says. "When we are not, we will fail. Don't ever say 'It's not possible'."

Dr Thanh, an engineer by profession, took the plunge and set up his own industrial production operation in 1994. With secondhand lines from one of the two big staterun breweries, the Ben Thanh Brewery & Beverage Factory began to brew and bottle beer under the "Ben Thanh" brand, which is still being sold on the market to this very day – although the beer business is rather on the back burner at the moment, despite an installed annual capacity of just under one million hectolitres, because THP changed course and in 2005 began bottling soft drinks.

Don't think for a moment that Dr Thanh did so with mainstream products like CSDs or water. No way! In Viet Nam, it's almost second nature for the innumerable small kerbside restaurants to
offer their guests self-brewed, cold tea. Free of charge. So why on Earth should anyone hit upon the idea of filling cold tea in bottles?  This is what Dr. Thanh did all the same. He claimed a blank spot in the beverage landscape for himself and became the pioneer in the iced-tea segment, thus raising a storm in a teacup. "Dr. Thanh Herbal Tea" was the innovative drink, and with it, the THP Group was the first to open a door for a new product category.

A new product every year
Each year on Dr Thanh's birthday, the 15th of October, it has become a THP tradition to launch a new product. Green tea, herbal tea and the energy drink are now the group's flagship brands, together accounting for approximately two-thirds of sales. The energy drink "Number 1", not in cans like his competitors' products, but in returnable bottles, brought the resounding success to THP. Following this encouraging feedback, Dr Thanh diversified still further and launched new products into the market. "0 Degree" is the name of the green tea available in a sugar-added and an unsweetened version, and this is nowadays leading the market by a long, long way. For filling in PET, THP used an aseptic line for the first time, rated at 36,000 bottles an hour and installed by Krones in 2006.

In 2008, "Dr. Thanh Apple Tea" was launched; in 2009, "VIP" ready-to-drink café au lait went to market; and in 2010, the carbonated green tea "ikun" in PET and glass bottles, and also the carbonated, strawberry-flavoured energy drink "Number One" in a glass bottle. Furthermore, THP's product portfolio includes juices, soymilk, the isotonic drink "Active" and the "Number One" drinking water.

Profitable packaging segment
The plant on the outskirts of Saigon was erected on 45 hectares as a multi-story building, and is bursting at its seams. Each and every nook and cranny is utilised since the plant accommodates no fewer than 10 PET hotfill lines, each rated at 28,000 bottles an hour; eight returnable-glass lines for still beverages, onAir Jordan X 10 Shoes

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