Vietnamese Tea Taking Off

The Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said 35 cities and provinces in Vietnam grow tea with a combined area of over 131,500 hectares and a capacity of 6.5 tonnes of fresh tea leaves per hectare, which supply materials for over 700 dry tea production units nationwide. In 2008, despite hard domestic and foreign production and trading operations, the tea sector exported 104,000 tonnes of tea valued at US$147 million, up 12.4 percent on year. In the first four months of this year, the tea sector exported 27,000 tonnes of tea worth US$34 million, up 9.7 percent on year in volume and up 8.9 percent on year in value. The Vietnam Tea Association (Vitas) attributed the considerable growth of the tea sector to the stable tea quality. Currently, Pakistan, Russia, Taiwan, China and Afghanistan are countries and territories that take the lead for importing Vietnamese-sourced tea. In the first four months of this year, tea volume imported by Pakistan increased by over 3,000 tonnes, Russia by 1,700 tonnes, Turkey by 300 tonnes and Holland by nearly 500 tonnes. It is said that tea is one among few agro products that target export growth in the circumstance that other goods cut their targets compared with the previous years.

With outstanding production and quality, Vietnamese tea products have made stronger presence in 110 countries and territories worldwide, of which the CheViet trademark have been registered and protected in 73 countries and territories. The CheViet logo has been also promoted in many countries and territories like the Britain, Germany, Belarus, the U.S., and Japan.

OpportunitiesAccording to the estimate by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in the 2009-2010, the world black tea imports are estimated at 1.15 million tonnes, an average increase of 0.6 percent per year. Main importing countries include the Britain, Russia, Pakistan, the U.S., and Japan, of which tea imports could account for 60 percent of the world’s total tea consumption in 2010. Specifically, Pakistan’s tea imports will increase by 2.9 percent per year to 150,000 tonnes from the earlier 109,400 tonnes, Japan’s imports will also increase by 1.8 percent per year to 22,000 tonnes from the previous 18,000 tonnes. In the U.S. market, despite economic decline, the demand for tea does not fall but strongly increases. Instead of buying expensive drinking like coffee, fruit juice and soft drink, the American people move to use cheaper products like tea particularly average-quality tea. In the European market, Germany and Russia’s demand for tea tend to rise. Right from the beginning of 2009, in these markets, people tend to move to use tea products like traditional tea, instant tea and special tea from luxurious drinking. This is considered a great opportunity for Vietnamese tea to acquire these markets.

 

Vitas Chairman Nguyen Kim Phong said, the tea sector has made great efforts to improve the quality and ensure food safety and hygiene standards in order to maintain prestige to international clients. The tea sector has also set up cooperation ties with China to better control quality of export and import tea.

 

Confident partners are introduced and Vietnam-China cultural exchanges are launched and eco-tourism in antique and special tea areas is developed. The sector has also collaborated with the Vietnam Trade Department in Iran and state agencies of the Ministries of Industry and Trade, and Agriculture and Rural Development, the Iran Embassy in Hanoi and invited the Iran delegations of the Food and Drug Control Agency and the Domestic Drinking and Food Hygiene Control Agency to visit Vietnam to inspect the tea production conditions and quality in Vietnam, which could be the basis for issuance of licenses for Vietnamese tea exporters to the market. In addition to continuously maintaining the current markets, the tea sector has been intensely launching campaigns to penetrate into new markets including Germany, Holland, Poland, and Arab Saudi and particularly to restore Iraqi market. 

 

Mr Phong also said that the tea sector has been incessantly making efforts to pursue a sustainable strategy to modernize processing industry, improve production and quality, open more training courses to help people enhance tea planting technical in order to produce and sell high quality tea products at appropriate and attractive prices. The tea sector will strengthen its research competence to make, select and multiply new varieties of tea in adaptation with land and climate conditions in particular localities. The sector will also improve planting and picking technical to reject toxic chemical residues in fresh tender tea leaves. Also, the sector will continue to strengthen the study and production of high-level and competitive types of tea like flower and fruit-scented tea, canned tea, medical tea (elderly tea, kidney stone tea, bitter tea and other herbal tea). The sector has always been modernizing production lines and processing technology to ensure quality as well as caring consumers’ taste. In addition, in order to improve the status of the tea sector of Vietnam in both the domestic and international arenas, tea products with Vietnamese trademarks must meet national standards. The Vitas also said that in order to actively remove barriers to tea production and exports, the association has been boosting up preparation for a tea transaction floor, accomplishing a project to build tea transaction centre and Vietnam tea museum in Hanoi in order to intensify promotion of Vietnamese tea trademark.

 

In addition to the association’s efforts, the government of Vietnam has paid due attention to support tea growers as well as tea producers in their operations. According to Decision No. 497/QD-TTg of the government dated in May 2009, farmers have been benefiting from free-interest loans to purchase machines and fertilizer. Tea growers as well as agro and forestry producers have chances to borrow soft loans from banks to boost development of agro, forestry and rural development. Besides, almost enterprises have committed buying all materials at higher prices and internationally quality.

Dai Ngoc