Big isn't always better when it comes to Australian businesses wanting to capitalise on the so-called Asian dining boom, says the boss of a Vietnamese dairy company.
Tran Bao Minh - chief executive of International Dairy Products - says big firms can be too slow to deliver products to meet fast changing consumer tastes across Asia.
For example, he said one large overseas company he recently dealt with took 18 months to two years to deliver a product to market. 
"That's not suitable for the Asian market when the demand is changing fast and consumers are constantly looking for new and better products," Mr Minh said.
"Our objective is to look for a company that is big enough to be reliable but not too big that it becomes too slow. When they're too big they're not flexible enough."
Mr Minh said he has found such a partner in Pactum Dairy Group - a milk processor based in northern Victoria which is a joint venture between Australian Consolidated Milk and Freedom Foods, the cereal and snack company backed by the billionaire Perich family.
Pactum has signed a deal to supply International Dairy Products, or IDP, with about 4 million litres of UHT milk a year.
Mr Minh said it could evolve into a long-term partnership stretching across a suite of dairy products, provided that Pactum can keep up with the fast changing Asian tastes.
"We are also looking at ice creams, cheese - if you have a very high quality raw milk you can do all kinds of dairy products that Vietnamese are more and more looking for.
"So it's a very long-term strategy and partnership with Pactum Dairy if, of course, they can keep up with our fast pace."
IDP is a mid-sized Vietnamese dairy company, generating about $US150 million ($198.4 million) in revenue each year.
Mr Minh's comments about bigger companies being bogged down by their size appears at odds with Gary Helou, the managing director of Australia's biggest milk processor Murray Goulburn and economists including HSBC's Paul Bloxham that Australian agribusinesses need to get bigger to become more competitive globally.
Mr Bloxham said in   November that the biggest constraint on the productivity and the competitiveness of Australia's food bowl was a lack of consolidation in the industry.
Meanwhile, Mr Helou hoped to create a super co-operative in the style of Fonterra when it lobbed a bid, when eventually failed, for Australia's oldest listed dairy company, Warrnambool Cheese and Butter in 2013.
However, Pactum Dairy Group, which launched 2014, operates one UHT plant in Shepparton in Victoria's north. Despite its smaller scale, it has already signed strategic supply agreement with Asian companies, including China's New Hope and Bright dairies.
Under its partnership with Vietnam's International Dairy Products, it will supply UHT milk for the company's LoveinFarm range, which uses milk sourced exclusively from overseas.
Mr Minh said overseas milk was a higher quality than Vietnam's domestic supply, where cows are kept mainly in pens. He said the name LoveinFarm came from his experiences visiting farms in New Zealand, Ireland and Australia, where cows roamed in paddocks and were more comfortable in a cooler climate.
"LoveinFarm comes from you having to have love for the cows on the farm as well as having love for the new generation that you are making the milk for."