Product diversification

Being passionate for agriculture, Luon always dreams of starting a business to get rich right in her homeland, and aspires to create products for the health of the community. In 1997, after graduating from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Agriculture and Forestry, she started a business with many models like growing abalone mushrooms and making incense. Currently, she is still manufacturing medicinal incense, which employs 500 households and churns out 150 tons for export a month.

Always searching and opening new business directions, she was never satisfied with that success. And, she has looked to organic foods that are safe for health and prevent disease for a sustainable future.

After more than two years of diligent research, engineer Tran Thi Luon successfully cultured cordyceps, established Thien An Cordyceps Co., Ltd., and put a large cordyceps farm into production in Go Cong Tay district. The company invested in 34 cordyceps growing rooms (30 square meters each) and four dark incubation rooms (60 square meters each). Each room can culture 5,000 boxes of fungus embryos and harvest 45-50kg of cordyceps (whose selling price is about VND4 million per kilo). After being put on the market, the product is highly appreciated by customers.

To date, the company has created many product lines such as fresh cordyceps, dried cordyceps, bottled and canned drinking water, cordyceps water, cordyceps nutritional powder, cordyceps sauce and cakes, and cordyceps spirits. Particularly, the company also designed gift boxes for customers to pick up suitable ones for relatives and families on special occasions like Tet at affordable and reasonable prices.

Bottled cordyceps water, fresh cordyceps and dried cordyceps have been bought for long-term sale by many supermarket chains and corporations. Additionally, the company has also developed a distribution agent system in many provinces and cities across the country.

Lifting the brand

Deputy Director Tran Thi Luon said, although she had successfully produced a precious fungus line, she found it hard to bring Thien An cordyceps to the market because of high requirements for storage and transportation.

To make products closer to consumers, prices must be reasonable and affordable for all consumers, especially low-income earners. She accelerated scientific and technological application to production. The company designed and built the factory and equipment and used available plant-based culture substrates (to replace silkworm pupae), which significantly reduced production costs.

In addition, as the fungus culture process is sterilized and strictly monitored (temperature, humidity, light and other factors are maintained like what is happening in nature), cultured substrates and embryos have a high rate of success. Uniform product quality also helps reduce production costs. Currently, Thien An cordyceps is certified by the Center for Experimental Analysis Service of Ho Chi Minh City (under the Department of Science and Technology of Ho Chi Minh City) to meet requirements for physical, chemical and microbiological parameters.

In 2020, Thien An cordyceps was certified a "4-star" OCOP product of Go Cong Tay district and a typical rural industrial product of Tien Giang province. The product won the first prize in the “Typical Agricultural Products" Contest at the Food Safety Week and the Vietnamese Food Week. Thien An Cordyceps Co., Ltd is also proud to be the first company in the country to produce many cordyceps product lines of reasonable prices for domestic and foreign consumers as per its business motto "Thien An Cordyceps is good for health of all”.

Not only focusing on business development, Luon and her company also take the lead in charity and social welfare programs. During the COVID-19 outbreak, her family donated 52.5 kilos of dried cordyceps (VND28 million per kilo) for patients and health workers in Tien Giang province.

Speaking of upcoming plans and intentions, she said that, in order to expand production, the company has expanded the planting area by 5 ha and grown more varieties of medicinal plants. Thien An Cordyceps Co., Ltd aims to plant a medicinal garden, invests in a healthcare ecosystem, hopes to be a place of entertainment, and directly visits cordyceps processing in the future.

In the coming time, the company will increase investment in financial resources, consolidate facilities to transform its food factory into a GPM-qualified functional food and pharmaceutical manufacturing factory. Besides, the company consolidates and stabilizes distribution channels in the domestic market, takes part in exhibitions, promotes international trade, and boosts exports to foreign markets.