Son La (VNA) – A cooperative in the northwestern provinceof
Son La has successfully applied research and technologies todevelop a thriving coffee business.

Enlisting the help of experts from the US and Germany, theBich Thao coffee cooperative in Son La city’s Hua La commune has adopted thehoney processing technology for coffee products for export.

Using locally-grown Arabica beans, the cooperative’s honeycoffee has received warm response from overseas customers despite its highprice of 22 USD per kg of ground coffee, compared to 1.8-2 USD for a kg of beanprocessed in the traditional wet method.

According to Bich Thao cooperative’s director Nguyen XuanThao, his cooperative has received orders for tens of tonnes of honey coffeefrom European and American countries.

Bich Thao has signed contracts to buy coffee beans from 300local farms, whose plantations spanning nearly 1,000 hectares in total. In the2018-19 crop, the cooperative bought 12,500 tonnes of beans for processing. Itsproducts, including green/roasted coffee bean and ground coffee, have beenshipped to Germany, the US, the UK, France and Thailand. 

It is noteworthy that the cooperative has researched andsuccessfully manufactured several kinds of processing machines. In 2016, thecooperative put into use the first  pulpermachine designed by itself. Since then, it received between 300 and 400 orders forthe machine from coffee farmers in Son La, Dien Bien, and the Central Highlandson an annual basis, reeling in dozens of billions of VND.

The cooperative later designed a coffee processing machinethat covers all steps from cherry to cup.

Bich Thao’s coffee with the trademark Son La organic coffeehas been selected among 18 outstanding local products to be developed under theprovince’s One Commune One Product (OCOP) programme for 2019.

Coffee was first introduced into Son La and other northernprovinces in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by French colonialists,turning this region into an important producer of raw Arabica coffee for theFrench coffee industry of the time.

The coffee area in Son La has been expanded, concentratingin Mai Son and Thuan Chau districts and Son La city, especially since 1995 whenthe provincial People’s Committee approved a project to plant 3,000ha of coffeetrees. The tree is considered a key plant for local poverty reduction andeconomic development.

Up to 80 percent of local coffee beans are exported to theUS, Japan and some other countries.-VNA