The Vietnam Dairy Products Joint Stock Co (Vinamilk) has received alicence to purchase a 70 percent stake of Driftwood Co in California, ata cost of 7 million USD.

Established in 1946,Driftwood Dairy specialises in producing and distributing products suchas fresh milk, soybean and ice cream, and fruit juice for schools. It isthe largest such company in California, USA.

Thecompany, which sells its products in California and abroad, has anannual revenue of more than 100 million USD. However, it has yet to turna profit.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation (HSC), Vinamilk is expected to help Driftwood turn a profit.

Vinamilk will expand production under the Driftwood trademark, andthen after market research, it will launch Vinamilk-branded products.

This is the second foreign trade deal of Vinamilkafter the company in 2009 poured 179 billion VND (8.52 million USD) intoMiraka Company that specialises in whole milk powder from New Zealandfor a 19.3 percent stake of the business.

Miraka is an important raw-material supplier of powdered milk for Vinamilk.

This year, the company targets total revenue of 32.5 trillion VND(1.54 billion USD), after-tax profits of 6.23 trillion VND (296.66million USD), and 34 percent dividends.

After nine months, the company has reached 80 percent of the year's profit plans.

Vinamilk has also announced that underprivileged children in Cam Khedistrict, northern Phu Tho province, were provided with more than 33,000free glasses of milk.

The milk donation programmeis under the Vietnam Rising Milk Fund launched by the Vietnam ChildrenSponsoring Fund and Vinamilk. It aims to reduce the percentage ofmalnourished children nationwide.

In the last fiveyears, the fund provided 20 million free glasses of milk worth 75billion VND (3.57 million USD) to 286,000 underprivileged childrennationwide.-VNA