Businesses benefit from industry promotion

Processing tea at the Long Phu Tea JSC

According to Long Phu Tea JSC Director Do Van Nam, the company is located in the Binh An 2 Industrial Park, Tuyen Quang City, and entered operation in May 2012. It has received VND100 million industry promotionfunding from the Tuyen Quang Industry Promotion Center and has invested in a modern tea drying system.

Since this investment, the company has increased its annual dried tea production capacity by 20 percent, from 300,000 tonnes in 2013 to 600,000 tonnes last year and expects to hit 700,000 tonnes this year. Moreover, the newly invested system has also allowed the company to save 15-20 percent of fuels. Currently, the company employs 50 workers with a monthly salary of VND4-4.2 million.

The company takes the lead in local tea production, with a daily tea production of 20 tonnes. This year, it expects to earn VND30 billion in revenue, including US$1 million fetched from tea exports to several Middle East countries.

The company has signed fresh tea supply contracts with tea farmers and cooperatives in Doi Can and Thai Long communes in Tuyen Quang City and Doi Binh and My Bang communes in Yen Son District.

Long Phu currently exports tea products to several Middle East countries that apply loose control of tea quality and pesticide residues. The company wants to widen its export market to Japan and the European Union with stricter control. So, it has planned to invest in a modern tea color sorting machine with a capacity of 500kg of tea per hour in order not to hire the machine at VND7 million in each sorting phase. However, the machine costs Long Phu US$125,000 and thus the company expects to receive more funding from industry promotion programs to partly cover the cost, according to Do Van Nam.

Deputy Director of the Tuyen Quang Industry Promotion Center Ung Thu Hong said that tea has been viewed as a mainstay to help farmers in Tuyen Quang escape poverty. The province has prioritized the development of PH1, a high quality and productivity tea variety. Currently, Tuyen Quang has about 20 tea production and processing companies several of which have received provincial industry promotion funding including My Lam, Song Lo and Tan Trao.

Thanks to this funding, local tea companies have been able to improve production and sales while boosting tea development at a local level.

Viet Nga