Vietnam Strives to Raise Added Value in Cashew Export

Vietnam, the world's biggest cashew nut exporter, is intensifying investment in processing different cashew products for stronger export and domestic consumption, and solving difficulties relating to workforce and funding.

Vietnam, home to over 200 cashew plants with annual combined capacity of processing some 700,000 tons of cashew nuts, will strengthen application of more advanced technologies in processing the nuts, and churning out more products like candies and chocolate stuffed with the nuts as well as items from cashew nut shells and trunks, according to the Vietnam Cashew Association.

Vietnam will improve its cashew's quality by applying clean production cycle from cultivation to processing, the association's general secretary Nguyen Van Lang told Xinhua on Monday.

With more cashew products having higher quality and better packaging and brands, local cashew enterprises will find it easier to increase their market shares, which currently stand at 90 percent in China, 80 percent in Australia, 60 percent in North America and 50 percent in the European Union. Domestic consumption that represents around four percent of Vietnam's cashew nut output now will also be boosted to reach around 15 percent by 2010.

In addition to further tapping such traditional markets as the United States, China and European Union, Vietnam is seeking new ones and expanding its presence in Russia and the Middle East, Lang said, adding that local cashew firms will partake in some trade promotion activities in Russia, Bulgaria, Egypt, Turkey and Brazil in the coming months.

To ensure stable sufficient supply of raw materials of good quality for cashew processing, the firms have been urged by the association to forge linkages with growers in terms of jointly developing material zones meeting the Good Agricultural Practice standard, providing them with high-yield varieties, advanced cultivation techniques and market information, and helping them cut down old cashew trees to grow new ones.

Vietnam, which grows 400,000 hectares of cashew mainly in the southeastern and central regions by the end of 2007, will increase the cashew growing area to over 450,000 hectares by 2010. In 2010, some 360,000 hectares can be harvested with an average yield of 1.4 tons per hectare.

Despite having bigger cashew-growing areas in recent years, Vietnam has to annually import over 150,000 tons of raw cashew materials, mainly from some African countries and Cambodia, Lang said, adding that the Vietnamese cashew industry has proposed the government to remove raw cashew import tax to support local producers.

Besides the material shortage, the local industry is facing labor shortage and higher banking interest rates which lead to bigger production cost, Lang said. The current number of employees is far below the industry's workforce demand of 300,000, he said, noting that many workers have left for other sectors with bigger income.

Recently, Lang and his colleagues have successfully manufactured an automatic cashew nut shell-splitting machine with cost only one-sixth of an imported one. When the machines are widely used, they will help reduce the industry's needed laborers by one third, he said.

Vietnam, earning 490 million U.S. dollars from exporting cashew nuts in the first seven months of this year and over 650 million dollars last year, has eyed nut export turnover of 700 million dollars in 2008, and one billion dollars in 2010, Lang said.

Source: CRIEnglish