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Ice Cream in Vietnam
Ice Cream in Vietnam
Euromonitor International
July 2022
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2022 DEVELOPMENTS
Product innovation remains the key growth driver for ice cream in
Vietnam
Following declines seen in total volume sales for ice cream over the last couple of years, the
category will start to make a recovery in 2022. The decline was driven by foodservice, with the
channel witnessing double-digit declines in both years of the pandemic. Although retail is
dominant in ice cream, the increase in popularity of take-home ice cream was not enough to
mitigate the drastic declines registered in foodservice. Nevertheless, innovation remained a
strong theme during the pandemic as the increased interest in take-home ice cream spurred the
category leaders to offer something new and enticing. One factor motivating consumers to
consume greater quantities of ice cream at home was the desire to pamper themselves and
relieve the stress that emerged from the COVID-19 crisis. Ice cream is widely seen as an
affordable indulgence and the ideal way to treat oneself, especially given the hot climate of the
country. Kido Group, the clear leader of the category (thanks to the popularity of its Celano and
Merino brands and its wide distribution network across the North and South of the country), was
prominent in this. For example, June 2020 saw the launch of New Celano with Pearl, whilst
2021 saw the launch of Merino’s green mango, salt and chili flavoured ice cream. Kido Group
also benefits from owning its own production factories, allowing it to shorten the amount of time
it takes to develop new products and thus perform better than its rivals in terms of keeping up
with consumer trends. Innovations from other players include Wall’s ice cream in bubble milk tea
flavour (2020), Walls ice cream in watermelon (2021), TH TOPKID’s chocolate and cheese
flavoured ice cream (2022) and TH TOPKID’s strawberry and banana flavoured ice cream (also
in 2022). Given that ice cream in Vietnam is primarily consumed for indulgence, fun and exciting
new flavours are a great way to catch consumers’ attention and are typically the top drivers for
purchase decisions in the category.
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single portion dairy ice cream and single portion water ice cream struggling to keep up with the
strong growth recorded in take-home ice cream. Although official quarantine restrictions were
eased during 2021, many consumers remained reluctant to spend much time outside of the
home due to fears of contagion for much of the year, with take-home ice cream the big winner
among all categories of ice cream and frozen desserts during the year.
In 2022, purchasing behaviour will start to normalise as consumers are less afraid of
contracting the virus, thanks to the successful vaccine roll out, and thus no longer fearful of
spending lots of time outside the house. In addition, prime travel locations and theme parks are
now open to both local and international travellers. Given that these are popular locations to
consume ice cream on-the-go, this will aid the sales growth of impulse and single portion ice
cream types as well as sales via the foodservice channel. Players in these categories are
expected to invest more in marketing and distribution to boost sales after being negatively
impacted by COVID-19 for two years. In contrast, take-home ice cream will see a marked
deceleration in growth as demand for this category starts to stall.
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to the country. Such factors are vital to the success of this category. However, it is single portion
dairy ice cream that is expected to benefit most from this. Consumers will continue to choose ice
cream based on its flavour and dairy ice cream is much richer in taste than water ice cream. As
such, the former will record increasingly robust retail volume growth rates whilst single portion
water ice cream will see declining sales for most of the forecast period.
High capital layout remains key barrier to entry for players despite wide
distribution being vital to success
In addition to refrigerators becoming a more common sight in Vietnamese homes, they are
also becoming more prevalent in traditional grocery retailers, with this is set to prove crucial for
boosting sales of both impulse ice cream and take-home ice cream. Consumers prefer to buy
ice cream from nearby shops, rather than travelling to a further away supermarket or
hypermarket as the ice cream will melt on the journey home. However, smaller local venues do
not typically have the resources to implement their own frozen storage and display facilities, so
major players are expected to invest to provide these and support retailer with electricity costs to
ensure their products can be sold in these locations. The cost for the logistics and distribution
system is high, making this large investment somewhat risky but also necessary to successfully
compete in the category. This means that the major players in the category with a larger pool of
resources are likely to stretch their lead as new products can be quickly duplicated by
competitors, but the distribution is a more complex and expensive challenge. Therefore, brands
that have advantages in distribution are anticipated to see long-term advantages in ice cream
sales.
CATEGORY DATA
Table 1 Sales of Ice Cream by Category: Volume 2017-2022
million litres
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
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VND billion
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
% volume growth
2021/22 2017-22 CAGR 2017/22 Total
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Frozen Yoghurt - - -
Impulse Ice Cream 2.8 3.1 16.5
- Single Portion Dairy Ice Cream 5.5 6.9 39.9
- Single Portion Water Ice Cream -7.0 -7.2 -31.3
Unpackaged Ice Cream - - -
Take-Home Ice Cream 2.8 6.4 36.7
- Take-Home Dairy Ice Cream 2.8 6.4 36.7
-- Bulk Dairy Ice Cream 2.5 6.3 35.9
-- Ice Cream Desserts - - -
-- Multi-Pack Dairy Ice Cream 4.0 7.1 40.8
- Take-Home Water Ice Cream - - -
-- Bulk Water Ice Cream - - -
-- Multi-Pack Water Ice Cream - - -
Source: Euromonitor International from official statistics, trade associations, trade press, company research,
store checks, trade interviews, trade sources
ranking
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Vanilla 2 2 1 1 1 1
Chocolate 1 1 2 2 2 2
Strawberry 3 3 3 3 3 3
Coconut 5 5 4 4 4 4
Banana 7 7 7 6 5 5
Green Tea 4 4 5 8 7 6
Mango 6 6 8 5 6 7
Durian 9 9 6 7 8 8
Raisin 8 8 9 9 9 9
Lemon 10 10 10 10 10 10
Source: Euromonitor International from official statistics, trade associations, trade press, company research,
store checks, trade interviews, trade sources
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Trading JSC
Wel Yo Kido Group 1.0 1.1 1.1 1.1
Thuy Ta Thuy Ta JSC 1.1 0.9 0.8 0.7
Celano Kinh Do Corp - - - -
Merino Kinh Do Corp - - - -
Others Others 24.5 23.4 22.4 22.4
Total Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Source: Euromonitor International from official statistics, trade associations, trade press, company research,
store checks, trade interviews, trade sources
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Source: Euromonitor International from official statistics, trade associations, trade press, company research,
store checks, trade interviews, trade sources
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million litres
2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027
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Source: Euromonitor International from trade associations, trade press, company research, trade interviews,
trade sources
VND billion
2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027
% volume growth
2022/23 2022-27 CAGR 2022/27 Total
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