Robert Wicks

Senior Director, Intermalt Vietnam (CBH)

“I feel quite proud to be part of a company that connects excellent farming practices in Australia with the latest world-class malting technology that’s being operated by a Vietnamese team.”

Robert Wicks has been working in the malting business for 40 years, starting in Australia. He first visited Vietnam in 1998, when he was exporting malt from Australia to Vietnam with Joe White Maltings – at the time the largest malting company in Australia.

Having always enjoyed doing business in Vietnam, and seeing great potential for the beer market here, he joined Intermalt, a subsidiary of Interflour Group (already one of Southeast Asia’s leading grain processors). Interflour had recognised they had a rare opportunity to change the malting business model: instead of importing the finished malt product, they would import the raw material – barley – and do the malting in Vietnam. They began production in 2017.

“That meant we were adding value in Vietnam, which I think was a wonderful thing,” he says. The initiative was a great success: Intermalt began making high quality malt in Vietnam and were therefore able to get it to their customers in one day instead of the usual three weeks or more.

Robert takes pride in the efficiencies of the business too - the Intermalt factory is next to the Interflour owned deep water port in Cai Mep, so they can bring in barley in bulk shipments and safely transport via conveyor to their dedicated silos. Most of the barley comes from their own parent company – CBH Group in Western Australia. “It’s a very efficient supply chain,” he surmises. This set-up also saw them through COVID-19, when customers and competitors experienced difficulties to bringing containers into Vietnam.

Intermalt is also conscious of its environmental impact. It has installed the latest world class technology to minimise its environmental footprint and continues to look for ways to improve. “Even just the fact that we’re producing malt locally reduces a lot of the footprint from freight,” Robert explains. “Because we’re bringing in grain in bulk in a large ship, that's less emissions, so our business model has inherent advantages.”

The company employs around 85 staff, most of whom had no malting experience when they joined. Robert has been happy to see their enthusiasm for the work and their ability to learn about the industry and technology, saying “we’ve really trained a team…that’s been one of the most satisfying parts of my job”.

Vietnam’s beer market has grown considerably since Robert started in the malting industry and now, he says, has some of the most modern, high technology, beer factories in the world, like Heineken at Vung Tau which according to Robert is utilising world leading technology. He doesn’t expect this to change, given the increasing population and the increasing spend on entertainment. “That's why I feel very positive about the future of this industry in Vietnam. And not just this industry, but probably everything in Vietnam,” he says.

“I feel quite proud to be part of a company that connects excellent farming practices in Australia – the farmers who are growing a high-quality raw material in the barley - with the latest world-class malting technology that’s being operated by a Vietnamese team. So, to me it's a wonderful example of Australia and Vietnam working together to produce an economically and environmentally sustainable, quality product. And it's happening in a long term, growth market.”