IN Brief:
- Oji Group held the groundbreaking for its US$110 million aseptic carton materials plant in Dong Nai on 10 October.
- The 57,000-square-metre facility is designed for up to eight billion packs a year and is expected to create more than 200 jobs.
- Operations are targeted for 2028; the original investment decision was announced in November 2025.
Oji Group has broken ground on a US$110 million factory for aseptic carton packaging materials in Vietnam, advancing a project first announced in November 2025 into construction at Long Thanh High-tech Industrial Park in Dong Nai province.
The 57,000-square-metre site will operate under the Oji Liquid Pak name and is designed to produce material for up to eight billion carton packs annually. The group expects more than 200 jobs to be created and is targeting the start of operations in 2028. Those figures describe the planned facility, rather than commissioned capacity or employment already in place.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on 10 October, attended by representatives of Oji Group, its packaging business, industrial park operator AMATA and the Dong Nai Industrial Parks and Economic Zones Authority. Oji announced the event on 12 October. Its original investment decision, disclosed on 7 November 2025, covered a plant for liquid packaging carton materials on the same site, with operations then envisaged around March 2028. The construction ceremony is the new development; the capital project itself was already public.
The investment adds a regional manufacturing operation to a liquid packaging business that Oji expanded through its acquisition of Italian specialist IPI in May 2023. IPI makes aseptic carton packaging and supplies filling equipment and associated technical services, and its Italian converting plant has stated capacity of approximately two billion packs. Oji Liquid Pak was established in Vietnam in 2025 to develop the group’s business across Asia-Pacific.
At the new plant, the specified activity is the manufacture of packaging material used to form cartons, rather than filling cartons with beverages or food. Once customers receive suitable material, their own filling systems convert it into containers, treat or sterilise the relevant surfaces as required, introduce the food or drink under controlled conditions and seal the packs. The exact operations depend on the filling technology and food being packed; Oji has not named the machinery or production lines to be installed at Dong Nai.
Aseptic packaging must work as a system. A carton structure needs sufficient mechanical strength to survive forming, filling and transport, while its barrier properties must protect the contents against factors such as oxygen and moisture where the product requires them. Seals and folds must remain intact through distribution and storage. Material performance alone cannot compensate for shortcomings in product treatment or hygienic filling, so establishing compatibility with a customer’s equipment remains necessary even when both suppliers use a roll-fed format.
Oji Liquid Pak says its material can be integrated with roll-fed aseptic filling machinery available in the market. With this approach, a continuous web is fed through the equipment and formed into packs as part of the packaging process. Dimensional consistency, surface condition and sealing properties influence how well the web travels through the machine and whether the resulting packs meet the required specification. The group has not published validated running speeds, rejection rates or material qualification results for the proposed Vietnamese output.
Customers are being offered two supply arrangements: packaging material for their existing compatible equipment, or a wider system combining materials, filling machinery and technical support. That allows Oji and IPI to provide equipment-related services alongside converted carton stock without suggesting that all customers must replace their filling infrastructure. No named customer contracts, initial production allocations or committed order volumes have been disclosed for the new factory.
The planned eight-billion-pack annual capacity is substantially larger than the approximately two-billion-pack capacity cited for IPI’s existing Italian converting operation. Both numbers are stated capacities and are not evidence of actual annual production, utilisation or guaranteed sales. Reaching the Vietnamese plant’s design output would depend on completed construction, equipment installation, qualification of packaging materials, demand and the ability to supply the necessary inputs consistently.
A regional manufacturing base could also alter the logistics of supplying carton materials to beverage and liquid-food processors in Vietnam and neighbouring markets. Previously, the group developed international sales through IPI and its existing operations. Production closer to some customers may reduce the distances over which finished packaging material needs to travel, although Oji has given no verified figures for transport costs, delivery times or associated emissions savings.
The packaging business is also addressing the difficult recovery of used aseptic cartons. Such packs typically use combinations of materials to meet food-protection and sealing requirements, and collection and recycling depend on sorting and processing routes capable of handling the resulting structure. Oji’s stated intention is to develop regional collection and recycling arrangements through technology development and industry collaboration, in the context of evolving producer-responsibility requirements. It has not reported a completed recycling network or recovery volumes linked to this investment.
Construction will therefore precede several milestones that determine the plant’s industrial output, including commissioning the converting equipment, qualifying carton materials for filling-line use and securing regular supply contracts. Oji has confirmed the investment, site, projected workforce, design capacity and 2028 operating target; the performance of the new facility will become measurable only after those processes have been completed.
