🥖 Green economy

Happy Sunday!

Welcome back to Bánh Mì Brief - your extra-toasty weekly slice of Vietnam business news, complete with billion-dollar deals, world-changing partnerships, and a sprinkling of “wait, did that just happen?” surprises!

This week: Syre and Nike are cooking up what could be the world’s most ambitious textile recycling plant. Germany’s Messer and PetroVietnam targeting some cool (literally) green energy innovation. And, Vietnam’s leaders are rolling out a future-proof education overhaul that’s more Silicon Valley than chalkboard.

Enjoy the read!

Swedish textile innovator Syre is doubling down on its bet that Vietnam will become the world’s first high-tech circular textile hub. On November 11, the company announced a multi-year partnership with Nike that cements plans for a $1 billion textile-to-textile recycling plant in Binh Dinh province. The facility shall process tens of thousands of tonnes of textile waste annually, transforming old garments into virgin-quality polyester fiber.

Vietnam currently manufactures around 50% of Nike’s global footwear output and 28% of its apparel, with 314 Nike factories employing over 461,000 workers across the country. This massive production footprint makes Vietnam the ideal location to close the loop on textile waste. Syre will serve as Nike’s lead strategic supplier for textile-to-textile recycled polyester, with the first products expected to hit shelves within the next few years.

Dennis Nobelius, Syre’s CEO, described the partnership as “the moment when circular materials move from concept to commercial reality at scale”. Beyond Nike, Syre has already lined up an impressive roster of partners including H&M Group, GAP Inc., Houdini Sportswear, and Target.

PetroVietnam’s subsidiary PVChem has partnered with Germany’s Messer SE & Co. KGaA to establish Cai Mep Industrial Gases Co., Ltd., a $37 million joint venture that will build an industrial gas plant in Cai Mep Industrial Park, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province.

The facility, designed to produce 200,000 tonnes of industrial gases per year, will leverage cold energy from PVGas’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal to power its cryogenic air separation technology. By recovering the cold energy generated during LNG regasification, the plant will significantly reduce electricity and water consumption while cutting indirect carbon emissions.

Messer has been operating in Vietnam for 27 years with total investments exceeding $500 million, running multiple facilities supplying industrial gases to steelworks and electronics manufacturers. As Vietnam pushes toward net-zero by 2050, projects like this demonstrate how infrastructure partnerships can deliver both economic growth and environmental progress.

On November 14, 2025, the government officially approved the investment proposal for the National Target Program on Modernising and Enhancing the Quality of Education and Training. By 2030, Vietnam aims to place at least 8 universities in Asia’s Top 200 and have institutions ranked in the world’s Top 100 in specific fields.

Infrastructure investments will focus on building 100 new boarding schools, upgrading digital libraries, expanding STEM facilities, and providing free unified textbooks to all students by 2030. The government commits to maintaining education spending at no less than 20% of the national budget, with 5% allocated to capital investment and 3% to higher education.

What makes this particularly strategic is the timing. As Vietnam pushes for double-digit GDP growth and positions itself as a semiconductor and AI manufacturing destination, the quality gap in human resources has become the bottleneck. Education Minister officials emphasized that “in today’s landscape, the sector must undergo bolder reforms than ever before” to meet rising demand for high-quality talent.

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