Sustainable, Digital and Resilient Supply Chains: Vietnam–Germany Research Cooperation

Viet Dung Trinh

Marianne Jahre

Vietnam is consolidating its position as a strategic logistics and manufacturing hub in Southeast Asia. The 2025 administrative reform sharpened this role: on 1 July 2025 Ho Chi Minh City merged with Binh Duong and Ba Ria–Vung Tau to form a single megacity that now concentrates the country’s industrial base and the large majority of its seaport capacity. Vung Tau, the venue for this forum, is today a coastal ward of that megacity and a gateway to its deep-water port system. At the same time, Vietnam is highly exposed to typhoons, flooding, and climate disruption, which places supply chain resilience, green logistics, and digitalisation at the centre of both the economic and the research agenda.
Germany offers complementary research strength. Kühne Logistics University (KLU), the Kühne Foundation’s flagship in Hamburg, concentrates its research on sustainability, digital transformation, and value creation across transport, logistics, and supply chain management, and hosts dedicated centres in shipping, sustainability, and humanitarian logistics. Through CHORD, its joint Center for Humanitarian Logistics and Regional Development with HELP Logistics, KLU works on disaster preparedness, resilience, and health and food supply chains in lower-income and emerging contexts. Holding this DAAD forum alongside the HELP Logistics Workshop allows the academic and operational sides of this agenda to meet in one place.
The forum brings the sustainability and digitalisation themes together with the resilience and humanitarian dimension that matters most for Vietnam, and uses the presence of senior KLU researchers in the region to build durable Vietnam–Germany cooperation.