Tea products need more added value

Although the fifth largest tea exporter in the world, Viet Nam has sold mostly raw tea and is advised to invest in both varieties and technology to bring added value for the product.

This was emphasised at a seminar to seek ways for the tea sector’s development in the Tay Nguyen (Central Highlands) province of Lam Dong on December 26-27. The seminar was part of the third Tea Festival.

The Vice President of the Viet Nam Tea Technology and Science Association Pham S said the tea sector should make the best use of science and technology to make breakthroughs in its development.

He noted that local tea producers have not yet paid due attention and investment in packaging and promoting their trademarks, warning them of a harsh competition that comes from small and medium-sized foreign businesses with high-quality tea strains and modern processing know-how.

Tea tree is planted on about 130,000 hectares in Viet Nam and more than 6 million people are involved in growing and processing tea.

However, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Plantation Department has found that varieties of high-quality tea are grown on just a small proportion of growing acreage, hence production is not effective.

It also referred to the unplanned development of small-scale private processing establishments that use sub-standard equipment and the lax monitoring of quality of both input tea and tea products as factors to make Vietnamese-made tea products less competitive in the world market. Viet Nam’s tea products have been sold in 110 countries and territories with Pakistan being the largest importer, followed by Taiwan and Russia.

In 2009, the country raked in US$178 million from the export of 133,000 tonnes of tea and expects to ship 120,000 tonnes for $200 million this year. —VNS

Tags: Vietnam tea