Oct 1, 2025
Part 2: The path to partnerships and long-term value
Gift giving is a big part of Vietnamese culture, with birthdays, weddings and holidays like Tet, Vietnam’s Lunar New Year celebration, all occasions to demonstrate affection through gifts.
Read Part 1: Roots of tradition, seeds of opportunity
What do Vietnamese business partners look like?
From a New Zealand perspective, the most exciting B2B (business-to-business) partners in Vietnam may be food manufacturers — companies that already sell ginseng, cordyceps, collagen, or royal jelly capsules and are looking for a next-generation ingredient to grow their consumer brand.
These firms:
- Have in-house marketing teams and often work with influencers
- Sell via pharmacies, supermarkets and online platforms
- Are constantly looking for new products and product lines to maintain growth
- Want ingredients they can trust and promote confidently
For them, our velvet and co-products can be more than commodities — they are value-adding ingredients. Imagine a company launching a new vitality or immunity capsule with 100% New Zealand deer velvet. Their message becomes: “Sourced from free-range New Zealand deer, raised on clean pastures, harvested under world-leading welfare standards, and fully traceable from farm to capsule.”
That’s a story that sells — especially when paired with influencer campaigns, wellness ambassadors, and in-store sampling. The beauty is that these companies already have sales channels, warehousing and logistics, and end consumers. What they can benefit from is a new and differentiated ingredient to help drive growth.
Co-creation and brand building
DINZ is currently in the early stages of engaging with the Vietnamese market and is focused on setting the scene for what “good” can look like in terms of long-term commercial collaboration. Rather than transactional sales, the goal is to co-create value through enduring, mutually beneficial partnerships. This includes exploring opportunities to support entrepreneurs who are building health and wellness brands — by offering access to New Zealand velvet and co-products, sharing content and traceability assets, and contributing to the development of differentiated, high-integrity products for the Vietnamese consumer.
DINZ is also open to hosting selected partners in New Zealand, helping them experience firsthand the ethical, sustainable farming practices that underpin our velvet story. These early conversations are about understanding each other’s needs, constraints, and aspirations, with the long-term vision being a win-win relationship: New Zealand contributing a world-class natural ingredient; Vietnamese entrepreneurs applying their market knowledge, distribution channels, and brand-building skills to bring new offerings to life.
Market access is a work in progress
As promising as Vietnam is, realising commercial potential hinges on getting the regulatory settings right. Securing market access for velvet and co-products, like many animal products, is no easy feat. It requires painstaking work to align systems, documentation, risk controls, and recognition pathways between two sovereign nations.
That’s why DINZ is grateful for the ongoing leadership and technical expertise of MPI’s market access team in Wellington, who are actively engaging with their counterparts in Hanoi. These discussions are not straightforward — they involve complex recognition frameworks, product classification under Vietnamese law, audit and validation of certification systems, and ensuring traceability and safety protocols meet Vietnam’s standards.
Progress is necessarily incremental, but momentum is building thanks to MPI’s deep institutional knowledge and the strength of the broader bilateral relationship. DINZ will continue to support MPI’s work, provide industry inputs, and facilitate early B2B trade conversations to help reduce friction and build confidence.
Expectations should be managed — this is not an overnight switch. The pathway will take time, persistence and partnership. That said, the medium-term prize is worth it: a new commercial corridor that unlocks high-value demand for velvet and co-products, channelling long-term value back to New Zealand farmers, processors, and exporters. An interim pathway could be through cross-border e-commerce – a smallish sales channel for goods in capsule format.
A long game worth playing
Opening new markets is a core pillar of the Thrive 2035 industry strategy, ensuring diversification and resilience beyond our established partners in China and Korea. Vietnam may not be our biggest velvet and co-product market today — but it’s one of the most strategically interesting. It offers:
- A population of 100 million with rising disposable income
- Cultural familiarity with velvet and traditional remedies
- A gift-giving culture
- An appetite for premium international products
- A local industry looking for quality, trust, and differentiation
- A strong consumer segment seeking solutions for vitality and wellbeing
- Opportunities for famous Vietnamese brands to serve this segment
- Innovative foods and wellness formats that surprise and delight
In short, Vietnam’s velvet opportunity isn’t just about volume — it’s about strategic value, targeted positioning, and potentially partnering with famous local brands to meet the evolving needs of discerning consumers.
By partnering with the right companies, showing up early, and telling our story well, New Zealand can carve out a distinctive, high-value place in Vietnam’s evolving health and wellness landscape. For New Zealand’s velvet industry — from farm gate to processor to exporter — that’s a journey well worth investing in.
