Coffee products are displayed at the Vietnam International Coffee Show 2018 in Ho Chi Minh City last May (Photo: VNA)HCM City (VNA) – Severalbusinesses have set up strategies to help their processed coffee products winthe trust of global consumers, given their belief that Vietnamese coffee hasthe strength and potential to do so.
Facing consumers’ fear of unsafe food, theVinamit JSC has developed clean farming methods and applied high technologiesin food processing and preservation. Aside from other dried agriculturalproduce, freeze-dried coffee products are one of the firm’s latest ideas.
Vinamit General Director Nguyen Lam Vien said thatfreeze-dried products are the outcome of his company’s devotion to producingconvenient and healthy organic products.
Many surveys show that today’s consumers havehigh demands for clean coffee. Notably, almost all export markets request that productorigins be traceable. Businesses need to not only actively build brands butalso satisfy the demands of modern consumerism.
Tran Thanh Hai, Chairman of the Board ofDirectors of the NutiFood Nutrition Food JSC, said the domestic instant coffeemarket currently faces fierce competition from large, long-standing coffeebrands from both Vietnam and other countries.
To survive in this competition, NutiFood has takenits own way, he said, adding that it has invested in having the best materialsfrom well-known coffee farming areas in the Central Highlands province of DakLak. It has also made use of technological advantages and research anddevelopment strengths to create an instant coffee product that has the sametaste as a filtered roasted coffee with sweetened condensed milk.
Le Tan, Vice Chairman and Secretary General ofthe Vietnam Cuisine Culture Association (VCCA), once said, while talking about Vietnamesefood, that foreign tourists usually think of pho (beef noodle soup) and banh mi(Vietnamese sandwich). However, there remain many other delicious dishes that areyet to be widely recognised, including iced milk coffee. Bloomberg used to nameVietnamese iced milk coffee among the world’s top 10 coffee drinks, while CNNsuggested that travellers coming to the country should try the drink.
Therefore, the VCCA prioritises potentialproducts of Vietnamese food to introduce to the world, with iced milk coffeeculture as one of them, he noted.
Tan said after entering a partnership withNutiFood, the VCCA will include “Nuticafe Fresh Iced Milk Coffee” on the listof products to be introduced at trade promotion events and activities to populariseVietnamese cuisine.
Meanwhile, King Coffee – a Trung NguyenInternational brand – took part in and impressed visitors at a coffee festivalin Los Angeles, the US, last August.
Kevin Nguyen, Business Director of King Coffeein the US, said more and more American consumers are choosing Vietnamesecoffee, even though there are plenty of coffee products from famous global brandsin this market. King Coffee still has a high chance of penetrating the Americanmarket.
Trung Nguyen International has developed itsdistribution network to more than 60 countries and all the 63 provinces andcities in Vietnam. It has opened an office in California and plans to expandthe distribution system through the King Coffee shop chain.
Commenting on the US market, VCCA ChairmanNguyen Quoc Ky said that this is a potential market for Vietnamese farmproduce. The important thing is how to create effective market accessstrategies and increase the added value of that produce through convenient andtop-quality processed goods.
Coffee is one of Vietnam’s key strengths, with thecountry now the second largest exporter in the world, he said.
He noted that fresh iced milk coffee and driedcoffee products are made using modern technology and meet internationalstandards as promising products because they are Vietnamese specialities, whilemany other countries are strong in hot coffee and other varieties.
Big opportunities are also accompanied bynumerous challenges, Ky said, stressing the need for stronger connectivity intrade promotion and pioneer steps by major businesses to optimise theadvantages of Vietnamese coffee on international markets.–VNA
VNA
