Japanese firm wants to join Vietnams tea industry

A tea farm in Vietnam

Hanoi (VNA) – Japan’s Sasaki Seicha company has surveyed Vietnam’s tea industry for a year and realised that this is a market not to be missed, the firm’s General Director Iwasaki Masao said.

The Cong Thuong (Industry & Trade) newspaper quoted him as saying that Vietnam used to be the world’s fourth biggest tea producer, but this ranking has dropped recently. Meanwhile, its tea export prices have decreased.

The Japanese firm wants to work with Vietnamese partners to export local tea products abroad, he noted.

Sasaki Seicha has been working with the Tea & Food Vietnam JSC to make plans for building tea factories and tea purchasing and farming in some northern provinces.

Vietnam has a tea farming area of 124,000 hectares, producing 500,000 tonnes of dry tea each year

It exported 130,900 tonnes of tea worth 217.2 million USD in 2016, increases of 5.1 percent in volume and 2.1 percent in value from the previous year, according to preliminary data from the General Department of Vietnam Customs