On March 1, Vietnam Milk Joint-stock Company (Vinamilk) signed a cooperative deal with DSM Group, Lonza Company (Swiss) and Chr. Hansen Grop, Denmark on research and nutrition science application to developing specific nutritional products for Vietnamese children.

The deal is expected to help the sides further expand cooperation, with the focus on five major areas, including: promoting information exchange, researching and developing new products, giving clinical assessment about the efficiency of products and assisting the construction of laboratory for testing food hygiene and safety, training expert staff to research and develop products and using trademarks.

“Vinamilk’s nutrition strategy in the next three years is to promote research into the nutrition reality of Vietnamese, especially children,” said Mr. Nguyen Quoc Khanh, Executive Director of R&D and Production, Vinamilk.

Mr. Khanh said that the close cooperation with the world leading nutrition partners will help Vinamilk apply modern scientific achivements to bring about significant nutritional measures which fits the specific needs of Vietnamese.

Lonza is a company expert in researching and supplying materials for life science with 28 factories worldwide. Its turnover reached nearly 2.7 billion Swiss francs in 2010.

Chr. Hansen is expert in researching the sciences of food, nutrition, health and agriculture, with a turnover of Euro 576 million in the 2009-2010 period.

DSM provides nutrition material methods with an annual turnover of 9.3 billion.

A study of 50,000 children from two to five years old in 63 provinces and cities showed that low weight for age (underweight) malnutrition rate accounts for 19.62% while low height for age (stunting) malnutrition rate was 29.05%, reported the National Institute for Nutrition.