{"id":2607,"date":"2021-08-12T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/tourism\/female-entrepreneurs-in-the-dairy-industry"},"modified":"2026-01-20T08:31:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T08:31:58","slug":"female-entrepreneurs-in-the-dairy-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/mekong-delta-people\/female-entrepreneurs-in-the-dairy-industry","title":{"rendered":"Female entrepreneurs in the dairy industry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mrs. Mai Ki\u1ec1u Li\u00ean, born in 1953, is originally from C\u1ea7n Th\u01a1 but was born in France. She is regarded as a phenomenon among female entrepreneurs and a leading businesswoman in Vietnam\u2019s dairy industry.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Under the talented leadership of Mrs. Ki\u1ec1u Li\u00ean, Vinamilk\u2019s revenue has surpassed USD 1 billion, consistently ranking as one of the top enterprises in Vietnam as well as in Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s workforce brings together highly qualified engineers and employees who are passionate about their work. With continuous innovation in business and Mrs. Li\u00ean\u2019s forward-looking vision, in 2014 Vinamilk planned to launch an \u201cexpedition\u201d into the neighboring country of Cambodia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recalling the time when she was assigned to study in Russia, Mrs. Mai Ki\u1ec1u Li\u00ean\u2014Chairwoman of the Board and CEO of Vietnam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company (Vinamilk)\u2014believes it was like \u201cdestiny.\u201d At that time, the 17-year-old student had no clear concept of the field she would study\u2014dairy processing\u2014especially since in 1969 the dairy industry in Vietnam was still underdeveloped. Five years at university were also a period of deep contemplation about her path after graduation. \u201cThere were times when I wanted to change my field, perhaps to education or medicine, as I had dreamed since childhood,\u201d the Vinamilk leader recalled. However, her father believed that this industry would help improve malnutrition among Vietnamese children when the country entered peacetime. This advice helped Mrs. Li\u00ean stay committed to completing her studies, although she still had no intention at that time of building a large dairy enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon returning to Vietnam, she was assigned to work as a shift engineer at the Tr\u01b0\u1eddng Th\u1ecd dairy factory. After holding many different positions, by 1992 she became the head of Vietnam Dairy Company. The Vinamilk leader once pondered the fact that Vietnam\u2019s dairy industry could not be fully self-sufficient in raw materials, a key factor that greatly affects business operations. Therefore, she advocated developing dairy farming in Vietnam by transferring cattle breeds and farming techniques, purchasing fresh milk from farmers at prices higher than imported raw materials to stimulate domestic dairy farming. At the same time, in the early 1990s, Vinamilk imported modern machinery to produce UHT fresh milk. The target market remained the highly potential domestic market, as per-capita consumption in Vietnam was still much lower than the global average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After nearly 20 years at the helm, Mrs. Mai Ki\u1ec1u Li\u00ean achieved many successes but also experienced numerous setbacks. Following equitization in 2003, Vinamilk was listed on the stock market in 2006, with a market capitalization of USD 530 million at the time. After five years, its market capitalization reached USD 2 billion\u2014nearly a fourfold increase. That momentum led Vinamilk to orient itself toward becoming a diversified food and beverage group under the Vinamilk brand, including dairy products and non-dairy sectors such as beer and coffee. However, joint ventures in beer production (Zorok) with SabMiller and a coffee manufacturing project did not meet expectations, forcing Vinamilk to divest these two projects to preserve capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than waiting for external intervention, the Vinamilk leader believes that businesses must first save themselves, because \u201cdistant water cannot put out a nearby fire.\u201d Instead of waiting for interest rates to fall, the company sought alternative funding channels, cut costs where possible, explored new market segments, and created new products. Vinamilk set a goal of achieving USD 1 billion in revenue by the end of that year, aiming to rank among the world\u2019s top 50 dairy companies by revenue by 2017, with USD 3 billion annually. In 2010, Vinamilk was the only Vietnamese enterprise to be included in Forbes Asia\u2019s list of the 200 best companies in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time, passion replaced the initial uncertainty and even doubts about choosing dairy processing as her field of study. Today, 90% of Vinamilk\u2019s new ideas originate from its \u201ccaptain,\u201d Mai Ki\u1ec1u Li\u00ean, based on her observation of consumer demand and her curiosity for discovering new and unique flavors. Optimistic in believing that no difficulty is insurmountable\u2014and that such experiences only strengthen one\u2019s resilience\u2014this dairy industry businesswoman always keeps in mind the need to identify which link in the overall chain is problematic and then focus on resolving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: VNEXPRESS<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mrs. Mai Ki\u1ec1u Li\u00ean, born in 1953, is originally from C\u1ea7n Th\u01a1 but was born in France. She is regarded as a phenomenon among female entrepreneurs and a leading businesswoman in Vietnam\u2019s dairy industry. Under the talented leadership of Mrs. Ki\u1ec1u Li\u00ean, Vinamilk\u2019s revenue has surpassed USD 1 billion, consistently ranking as one of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[651],"tags":[935,1013,1014,934,1015],"location":[661],"class_list":["post-2607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mekong-delta-people","tag-can-tho-entrepreneurs","tag-champion-of-the-dairy-industry","tag-dairy-industry","tag-female-entrepreneurs","tag-general-director-of-vinamilk","location-can-tho"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2611,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanhoamientay.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}