Vietnam Business Forum’s reporter has an interview with Mr. Nguyen Khac Tien, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ameii Vietnam Joint Stock Company, on the journey of siding with Hai Duong farmers to bring local agricultural products to the international market. Nguyen Bach reports.

What do you think about the agricultural export potential of Hai Duong province, especially Thanh Ha lychee products?

Hai Duong province is located in the heart of the Red River Delta, with many potential and favorable conditions to develop commercial agricultural production, raise their quality, added value and competitiveness to meet domestic and export market demands.

Every year, Hai Duong supplies to the market 750,000 tons of rice, 700,000 tons of vegetables and tubers, and 300,000 tons of fruits. Many large-scale concentrated production areas bring in high productivity, output and quality, including onions and garlic (Nam Sach and Kinh Mon districts), carrots (Cam Giang and Nam Sach districts), vegetables (Kim Thanh and Gia Loc districts), litchi (Thanh Ha and Chi Linh districts), tubers (Kim Thanh) and tapioca (King Mon).

In searching supply areas that meet agricultural export standards, we recognised that Hai Duong has huge potential and competitive advantages, especially Thanh Ha lychee with outstanding quality, has protected geographical indications, clear traceability and international standard production. Therefore, Ameii is ready to accompany Hai Duong farmers to bring local agricultural products to the international market.

In the past, how has Ameii sided with Hai Duong to help bring local agricultural products to international customers?

Accompanying farmers in Hai Duong province for a few years now, Ameii has brought many local agricultural products such as lychee, longan, carrots, cabbage, lemongrass and banana leaves to customers around the world.

Particularly from 2019 until now, Ameii has purchased 1,500 tons of litchi and 2,000 tons of other agricultural products for processing and export. Of the sum, 1,200 tons of lychee has been exported to Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Australia.

Based on its long-term development strategy, Ameii built factories and warehouses to produce and process vegetables and fruits, dried and frozen, for export. Agricultural products cultivated in Hai Duong will be directly processed by its factories and exported to countries around the world. With professional production and processing processes and close cooperation with farmers, the company has established standard raw material areas to improve product quality and bring local agricultural products to customers in the international market.

For exporters of agricultural products, the most difficult thing to keep the market and customers is to ensure input stability. How does Ameii solve this to build a sustainable relationship with Hai Duong farmers?

Ameii determines the long-term goal of building good raw material areas and creating sustainable links with farmers. If we only develop production and processing facilities and forget input supply sources, our system will certainly not be sustainable and will not operate in the long term.

In Hai Duong, in 2020, the company established Ameii Vietnam Cooperative in Thuy Lam village (Thanh Son commune) with 37 members in the first phase, mainly producing litchi. This growing area has fresh air, clean soil and water for producing litchi. In this area, all cooperative members must strictly follow VietGAP and GlobalGAP procedures. All lychees are purchased by the cooperative at a higher price than the market. Because of this advantage, many farmers want to join the cooperative.

In the coming time, we hope to form cooperatives not only for litchi but also for many other agricultural products. At that time, each member of Ameii Vietnam becomes a channel or an export consultant who can provide standard production processes and help other farmers out of the cooperative to produce standard products for fastidious export markets. At the same time, they will play a bridging role to connect businesses to sell products and recommend fresh products to them.

With its resources and strengths, how does Ameii build a development strategy to continue supporting the province to raise the class of Hai Duong agricultural products?

Beside local potential and strengths in agricultural production, the active care and support of all-tier authorities is a great encouragement for businesses to invest in the province. Therefore, in the coming time, we will focus our resources to continue accompanying Hai Duong farmers to bring their agricultural products to the international market.

In the future, besides fresh and simply processed products, Ameii will further invest in deep processing. In the near term, we will plan to build a 5-ha processing factory in Hai Duong province which is offering a good location for the company.

After the factory is established, we will make more frozen products, fruit and vegetable powder and fried products. Particularly, fruit and vegetable powders now have high potential for baking and nutritional products. Frying lines which can be used to process bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots and other products for the markets have been activated with fresh “conductors”.