Serving royal tea at Luc Bo in Hue, Vietnam. Date: 2016-11-22 Place: Hue Photographer: Phuoc Buu Copyright Owner: Viet Nam News
HANOI: Domestic companies are being encouraged to produce high-quality tea products, such as speciality teas, to serve local consumption and export demand.
Between 2018 and 2023, Vietnam exported between 125,000 and 140,000 tonnes of tea each year, bringing in revenue of US$220mil to US$240mil per year, according to the Vietnam Tea Association.
During the period, some enterprises had provided high-end tea products with prices ranging from US$15,000 to over US$50,000 per tonne, much higher than the average export price of Vietnamese tea at only US$1,700 to US$1,800 per tonne.
However, the ratio of the high-quality tea products remained low.
Nguyen Dang Ben, general-director of IGV JSC, which owns the Thach Co Tra brand, said that the revenue of the Vietnamese tea industry mainly comes from green and black teas, which are low-value tea products, so the industry’s revenue is low and producers do not enjoy high profits.
Ben told Nguoi lao dong (Labourer) newspaper that he has chosen to invest in speciality tea from ancient trees in old forests.
These tea products are processed within five hours of harvesting.
Thanks to a fermentation method, the longer the tea products are stored, the more value they will have, he said.
According to Ben, China has been very successful with Pu’er tea and the Chinese speciality tea market is worth up to US$35bil a year.
He added that Pu’er tea is a product that brings higher profits than others, as it is also bought for collecting and investment purposes.
The founder of Thach Co Tra – a unique fermented tea product that can maintain its flavour for centuries – said he believed that the Vietnamese speciality tea market could reach US$3.5bil each year.
Speciality tea can also be exported to bring in large amounts of foreign currency, Ben said, adding that to do this, it is necessary to protect, care for and preserve the unique primaeval tea forests, which are only in five countries in the world: Vietnam, China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.
Previously, the of Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry had identified tea as one of six key industrial crops by 2030, covering an area of about 120,000ha to 150,000ha.
Over eight months of this year, Vietnam shipped 92,280 tonnes of tea worth about US$162mil, up 30% in both volume and value. — Viet Nam News/ANN
