May 20, 2026
 

Vietnam shrimp industry urged to shift from volume to value as Ecuador and India tighten cost advantage

Feed optimisation, disease-resistant genetics and technology adoption identified as the pillars of a sustainable competitive strategy.

 

Vietnam's shrimp industry must move away from price-based competition and reposition around quality, traceability and value-added processing, as Ecuador's low-cost model and India's production scale continue to squeeze its market standing, according to industry executives and government officials.

 

Vietnam exports shrimp to more than 100 markets and accounts for over 40% of the country's total seafood export turnover, but structural weaknesses — including fragmented production, weak value chain integration and inconsistent product quality — are limiting its ability to compete sustainably at scale.

 

Feed costs remain the most significant input pressure, accounting for 50–60% of production expenses. Nguyen Duy Hoa, Deputy Technical Director of Cargill Vietnam, said feed should be managed as a profit-generation tool rather than simply a cost item. He said improving feed conversion ratios, increasing the use of domestically sourced raw materials and diversifying nutritional inputs — including plant-based ingredients such as soybeans — could improve efficiency without raising costs.

 

On farm technology, Trinh Trung Phi, Deputy General Director for Technology and Commercial Shrimp at Viet-Uc Group, said shrimp farming now requires integrated risk management across the entire value chain, from broodstock and hatchery operations to biosecurity, environmental control and early disease detection. Biofloc systems, recirculating aquaculture systems and IoT-based monitoring tools are being adopted to stabilise production conditions and improve survival rates.

 

Improving shrimp genetics and developing disease-resistant breeds is considered a foundational priority, with industry experts increasingly emphasising survival rate over raw productivity as the key performance measure.

 

The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) said the sector's resilience in 2026 will depend on its ability to stabilise key export markets — particularly the United States — and advance further up the global value chain through deeper processing and premium branding.

 

Nguyen Van Long, Director of the Department of Science and Technology under the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, said government investment in breeding research, input material self-sufficiency and environmental treatment would underpin longer-term growth. He added that AI-based monitoring for growth tracking and risk detection is an area Vietnam needs to accelerate as part of its broader digital transformation agenda.