Vietnamese confectionery maker Kinh Do Corp hasenterednew sectors after buying stakes in a vegetable oil company and a local coffee maker selling its beans in the U.S.

Kinh Do has also joined with a foreign-owned firm to produce instant noodles and spices.

Speaking with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper early this week, Pham Dinh Nguyen, mayor of PhinDeli Town in Wyoming, the U.S., confirmed that Kinh Do has become a strategic shareholder of PhinDeli Joint Stock Co, a coffee firm, after the two parties reached a strategic business cooperation deal.

Although the value of the investment and the percentage of ownership have not been revealed, according to Tuoi Tre’s source, Kinh Do now owns over 51 percent stakes in PhinDeli.

Nguyen founded the Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered coffee firm PhinDeli in 2013 after bidding US$900,000 at an auction to purchase Buford Town in Wyoming in 2012.   

One year later, he changed Buford Town to PhinDeli Town, deemed the U.S.’s smallest town, and sell Vietnamese coffee there.

"PhinDeli Town is a personal property, completely unrelated to the deal with Kinh Do and I have no intention of reselling this town," Nguyen said.

On Monday, Reuters reported that Vietnam's confectionery maker Kinh Do Corp could buy 24 percent of shares in state-run vegetable oil firm Vocarimex following an approval by its shareholders at an annual general meeting.

Vocarimex, with a total registered capital of VND1.2 trillion ($56 million), seeks to raise at least VND428 billion ($20.1 million) through its initial public offering on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange on July 25, according to Reuters.

The country’s cooking oil market size is now estimated at some VND22.3 trillion, or over $1 billion, with annual growth of 7-9 percent, while the respective figures for the instant coffee market are VND4.75 trillion ($223.25 million) and 15-20 percent, Tran Quoc Viet, deputy general director of Kinh Do, told The Saigon Times Online.

Vocarimex is now a major cooking oil producer in the domestic market with two popular cooking oil brands, Tuong An and Nakydaco.

It also owns stakes in Cai Lan Oils and Fats Industries Co. Ltd – which is the owner of Neptune and Simply cooking oil products – and Golden Hope Nha Be Co, the owner of Marvela cooking oil, The Saigon Times Online said.

In March this year, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed a decision giving the green light to Vocarimex’s equalization plan. Accordingly, the state would own a 36 percent stake in the firm, leaving strategic investors, employees and outsiders to buy 64 percent in the vegetable oil company.

In June, Kinh Do announced that it would partner with the Taiwanese-owned Saigon Ve Wong to produce instant noodles and spices in the third quarter of this year under an agreement signed a month earlier.

At the Vocarimex annual general meeting, Kinh Do’s shareholders also agreed on this year’s revenue target of VND5.15 trillion ($242 million) and pre-tax profit of VND660 billion ($31 million), rising 13 percent and 6.6 percent respectively over last year’s figure. The company expects to offer its shareholders a dividend of 20 percent in cash, according to The Saigon Times Online.

Kinh Do Corp recorded a net profit of VND502 billion ($23.8 million) in 2013, up 42 percent from a year earlier, while revenue increased 6 percent to VND4.6 trillion ($216.2 million).

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