Tea products from the northern province of Thai Nguyen are known nationwide for their unique scent, taste and colour.*

Efforts by local growers have added more value to the product. The Hoang Binh Co. Ltd. is a successful example of a company producing high-quality tea.

Established in 1994, the Hoang Binh Company first has had its fingers in many pies including wooden furniture, hotels, tourism, tea production and export. Taking into consideration the popularity and potential of Thai Nguyen tea products, particularly Tan Cuong tea, the company has paid more heed to the promotion and development of this leading brand. After investing more than US$1 million to build the Thai Nguyen-Tan Cuong Tea Export Factory, the company trained a contingent of highly skilled technical engineers and workers fully capable of producing safe, clean and high quality tea products.

The company’s director Vu Duong Binh said: “Our tea products are processed from high-quality tea leaf by a perfect combination of modern machinery from China and Taiwan and highly-skilled human resources, resulting in a product loved by customers all over the world.”

“Our Tan Cuong products are being sold in many countries, including the EU, the Czech republic, Japan and the US,” Mr Binh said. “While other tea businesses have only focused on selling loose tea abroad, we export finished, packaged tea products because branded tea brings higher returns while also promoting our trademark in foreign markets.”

According to Mr Binh, what Vietnamese tea businesses still lack is a good promotion plan for their products. Despite Vietnam exporting a large amount of tea products every year, Vietnamese tea brand name are still unknown in the world. He added that Vietnamese businesses that export loose tea abroad lose a great deal of money, because foreign companies process, package and put their brand names on the tea and earn profits many times higher than the Vietnamese businesses do. Therefore, it makes good business sense for Vietnamese tea businesses to export finished products abroad under their own trademark.

Mr Binh also suggested that the Government release tea-exporting businesses from the 10 percent value-added tax, which is not levied on loose tea exports.

The building of brand names for tea businesses in Thai Nguyen province in particular and in Vietnam in general is of great importance.

“If our brand names become recognised worldwide, the value of our tea products will of course increase and that means increased profits,” Mr Binh said. “We hope the Government pays more attention to the registration of origin and promotion of brand names for Thai Nguyen tea products. Our Tan Cuong brand name is now protected and we hope that the Government will facilitate the registration of other Tan Cuong tea products.”

In recent years, the company has become a major player as shown by the fact that so far this year it has earned approximately US$1.4 million.

As part of its long-term strategy, the Hoang Binh Company will continue to boost its marketing activities through the mass media and seek more outlets. For the company, the promotion of its products is always a vital issue which will help the company move forward.

(Source: Bvom)