HANOI – Vietnam ranks fifth in tea production and export but its tea export price stays at the lowest compared to other exporting countries, experts said at a conference on tea development in Hanoi on Tuesday.
Tea export price stays low
By Thuy Dung - The Saigon Times Daily
HANOI – Vietnam ranks fifth in tea production and export but its tea export price stays at the lowest compared to other exporting countries, experts said at a conference on tea development in Hanoi on Tuesday.
Professor Nguyen Duy Thinh from Hanoi University of Science and Technology said Vietnam had a total tea farming area of 126,000 to 133,000 hectares with around two million people working in the sector. However, the tea export value is low, at only US$1,164 a ton last year compared to US$4,073 in Sri Lanka, US$2,864 in India and even US$10,134 in European countries.
According to Thinh, such a low price may result from the overuse of insecticides by farmers and the failure of processing firms to meet food safety and hygiene requirements.
“It is the low quality of products that makes Vietnam a country having the highest volume of tea export returned by U.S. customers,” he said.
Currently, Vietnam’s tea has yet to have a brand name, and foreign partners mainly buy tea from Vietnam to mix with their tea.
Doan Anh Tuan, chairman of the Vietnam Tea Association, said the haphazard licensing of tea processing plants has resulted in unnecessary overlap in material cultivation areas.
According to the Department of Processing and Trade for Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Products and Salt Production, the competition within the tea industry is very intense with over 450 processing plants able to process nearly 1.5 million tons of fresh tea buds a year. However, they can actually process 600,000 tons a year, or 40% of their capacity, due to a shortage of raw tea.