Nguyen Tien Trung, chair of the National Startup Consulting and Investment JSC, speaking at a conference on smart agriculture recently, mentioned the model of two young men starting a business with plants and trees. With the knowledge they received at school and their inquiring minds, they created natural beautycare products, including shampoo, shower gel and facial cleanser.

The special feature of the products is that they are all made of familiar materials easily found in Vietnam and cheap, such as ginger, citronella and lemon leaves. Currently, the young men earn VND100 billion a year.

Tran Van Tan, chair of the Thanh Hoa provincial Organic Agriculture Association, said he started his business with hi-tech organic agriculture.

“We found a right way to follow – developing centella growing area in Thanh Hoa. From the centella plants, growing wild in many places, the company has successfully developed a material growing area, 200 hectares, and a processing plant."

Fresh centella sells for VND15,000-20,000 per kilogram and growers can obtain an average income of VND12-15 million a month. 

“Processed centella products are exported to Japan, South Korea, Qatar and Australia. A Japanese partner has invited us to Japan to discuss the cooperation and import of centella powder,” Tan said.

The businessman said it took him 4-5 years struggling with land accumulation, administrative procedures and accessing capital to have a production base. He plans to build one more processing workshop and hopes to cut production costs by 25-30 percent so that everyone can buy centella powder.

Nguyen Van Tien, former director of the Agriculture Department of the Party Central Committee's Economic Commission, said there are many open policies for agriculture development, including the Land Law which encourages land accumulation for large-scale agricultural production. 

Trung pointed out that Vietnam should pursue clean and organic agriculture methods. 

The director of a company specializing in making RS (resistant starch) from green soy and bananas revealed that he has cooperated with P&G to exploit a banana growing area in Quang Nam, and a sweets manufacturers to use RS to increase added value to products.

“Instead of selling fresh bananas at just tens of dong per kilogram, they make RS to sell to large corporations to earn hundreds of billions of dong,” he said.

Tran Chung