Tran Tuan Anh, the Trade Commissioner for the Embassy of Canada in Vietnam, also led a visit to Genesus customer DABACO the day prior to the roundtable meeting. The delegation was very interested in Genesus’ business with DABACO, which is highlighted by the very recent arrival of 775 head of Genesus registered purebred swine from Manitoba in Canada to the quarantine farm prior to entering the DABACO nucleus herd in Bac Ninh Province.

For Genesus, there is nowhere more important to be every other year in March than VIV Asia in Bangkok, Thailand. This year was no exception. VIV Asia is the largest international platform for Southeast Asia’s booming animal protein production and processing industry. VIV Asia has propelled itself to become the most important gateway to Asia’s emerging markets for professionals from throughout Asia involved in producing and processing animal proteins. Genesus staff had 3 excellent days at VIV Asia supported by staff from our Thai distributors. We met many global customers, contacts and friends in the trade. I guess we are all hoping that we never experience the lack of organisation at Bang Na Sky Train station, causing long, hot, sweaty and frustrated crowds at the end of the first day.

During the morning of the 2nd day, one of our distributors, Vet Inter, organised a meeting in the nearby Maple Hotel which was a perfect choice for a Canadian company. I gave a 90 minute presentation on the topic "why Genesus is the answer for the swine farm in Thailand”. The meeting was well attended by more than 70 Thai farmers. Finally, we enjoyed a delicious Thai buffet lunch before heading to Bitec for VIV Asia.

The middle stop for the this business trip to Asia was Manila in the Philippines, where besides the usual business meetings to further grow the Genesus business, Mike Van Schepdael (the Vice President of Genesus) and myself were fortunate to be invited to the swine production performance monitoring project annual presentation of the 2016 swine production performance monitoring data at club Filipino in Manila. The focus of this swine association is to work together to benchmark and improve their swine performance levels by focusing on their weak areas and beat agreed set targets. Each member submits their performance which then forms part of this swine performance data. After this meeting, every member will get a follow up visit to discuss their results, especially the weak areas, and what improvements can be made. Prior to the main event, there were some presentations including increased productivity and efficiency through DNA marker selection in swine breeding. Just prior to the setting of targets for 2017 was refreshments sponsored by Atlas Nutrition. The liveweight pig price is currently at a profitable level in Luzon of 126 PHP (2.50 USD).

Final stop of this business trip was to visit some of our new potential clients with Nguyen Van Hung in the South of Vietnam. Although the industry is positive and the large scale producers continue to expand, they are currently experiencing a liveweight pig price as low as 32,000 VND (1.40 USD) with an average breakeven of around 39,000 VND (1.71 USD) giving a current loss of up to 34 USD.

The pig price and profitability varies more Country to Country in S.E. Asia than the temperature, which was mainly between +30 and 34 degrees Celsius. These hot and humid climates challenge the performance and health status of the pig. At Genesus we just see this as opportunity with our high appetite, easy breeding genetics. We are honoured to be associated with several leading swine businesses in S.E. Asia and all of these are producing well at between 28 and 31 PWSY.