Processing pineapple for export at the factory of the An Giang Agriculture and Food Import - Export JSC in An Giang province (Photo: VNA)Experts said the lack of a processing industry had caused potential economicloss due to damaged fruits and vegetables after harvest.
Nong Ngoc Trung, Chairman of Golden Field Agriculture and Forestry Joint StockCompany, said: "A large agriculture industry without processing technologywill be difficult for the consumption of agricultural products tosucceed."
Accordingly, Trung said the application of deep post-harvest technology was keyto reducing logistics costs, opening and accessing many markets worldwide, andincreasing product value.
"For a long time, we often consume fruit products in fresh form.Meanwhile, transporting fresh fruit to the market faces many risks of loss,minimising economic value. When importing Vietnamese fruits, other countriesmust also carry out the processing. If we process products right at the rawmaterial area, the economic value will certainly increase much higher,"Trung said.
The director said the new drying technology was ten times cheaper thanconventional technology and the output product has outstanding quality incolour and taste. For example, 11 kg of fresh dragon fruit cost 7,000-10,000VND, then dried into one kg of finished product, priced at 15 USD or 300,000VND.
He added: "Dried fruit can be preserved for 24-36 months compared to onlyten days of fresh fruit, giving businesses plenty of time to access the globalsupply chain."
To solve the problem of consuming post-harvest products and meeting fastidiousmarkets, Trung's company owns a versatile drying technology, helping todiversify products and increase consumption time for products from agricultureto the fishery.
In particular, he said the drying system can be completely transported bycontainer, easily transported across areas, even to remote areas. In addition,thanks to the advanced sterilisation drying technology, fully controlled by 4.0technology with a drying temperature range of 0-85 degrees Celsius, the companycan dry 5-7 tonnes of agricultural products within 24 hours.
Trung told local media: "Our technology is well received and appreciatedby many customers in Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, the US, China, and theRepublic Korea."
Earlier, the Phuc Ha Juice Company Limited worked with Trung's company to forma storage and processing area for dried dragon fruit with more than 600 tonnesof fresh fruit per month, creating stable jobs for local workers.
Le Thi Nguyen Ha, Director of the Phuc Ha Juice Co., Ltd., recognised theimportance of investing in processing technology for fruit, saying:"Modern processing brings high economic value and increases income forfarmers."
Sales Director of Sasaki Vietnam Dang Tran Viet said refrigeration dryingtechnologies were also a new trend to bring higher product quality with lowproduction costs and high efficiency as well as environmental friendliness.Moreover, post-harvest agricultural products could retain their delicioustaste, colour, smell and taste thanks to this technology.
Ngo Quang Tu, a representative of the Department of Agricultural Products Processingand Market Development (MARD), said more than 76% of exported fruits andvegetables had not been processed. As a result, the consumption is still in theform of fresh or preliminarily processed and preserved, leading to very highpost-harvest losses and high spoilage rates in transit and during consumption.
He considered the poor post-harvest preservation process and lack of minimalequipment such as electricity, water, and cold storage are reasons for thelosses.
Expanding processed products from agricultural products
With five years of experience in the fruit processing industry in Vietnam,representative of Andros Company Asia, Valentin Tran, said that the firm wastrying to build a chain of production and consumption of fruit products in TienGiang and the safe material areas with Global GAP certification in provincessuch as An Giang and the central highlands area.
Fruits will be processed into finished products such as jams, ingredients formaking drinks, cakes, bottled water, and fruit products for children, thenexported to the European market.
Tran said that he processed 20,000 tonnes of fresh fruit each year and exportedmore than 40,000 tonnes of processed fruit to foreign markets.
Tran said that Vietnamese fruit had a lot of potential for development inforeign markets because it possesses many advantages in terms of varieties,product quality and good price, adding the deep production of fresh fruit intoother materials will increase the product's value.
Tran said that for domestic fruit to go further, it was necessary to improveproduct quality and change traditional farming habits to sustainable farming toavoid the problem of good harvest resulting in devaluation.
Le Duy Toan, director of the Duy Anh Food Company Limited (HCMC), usespost-harvest agricultural products to process into various types of vermicelliand rice paper, creating surprises and attraction for the Japanese and RoK markets.
Toàn's firm has more products made from other agricultural products, such ascoffee vermicelli, sweet potato vermicelli, moringa vermicelli, spinachnoodles, beetroot noodles, pumpkin noodles, black sesame noodles and carrotnoodles.
Director of the Institute of Agricultural Mechatronics and Post-Harvest Technology,Pham Anh Tuan, said: "Although the application of post-harvest technologyto preserve and process products has been applied by many units, the situationof good harvests resulting in devaluation still recurs."
As more than 80% of establishments have less than 2 billion VND capital, whilethe loan mechanism and policy are not suitable for 80% of these small andmedium enterprises, it is also trouble for the development.
Therefore, to increase the value of post-harvest agricultural products, it isnecessary to reorganise production and material areas to promote chainproduction to ensure raw materials for processing, according to experts./.
VNA
