Brand positioning helps Buon Ma Thuot become global coffee hub
High-quality coffee products and specialty coffee are expected to help position the brand of Buon Ma Thuot coffee, contributing to turning the city of the same name in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak into a global hub for specialty coffees.
Specialty coffees refer to those that score over 80 on the hundred-point scale set by the Specialty Coffee Association.
The province has organised an annual coffee competition called Vietnam Amazing Cup since 2019.
In the competitions, more than 200 specialty coffees in the province have been showcased and evaluated by the top experts in the world. Their aromatic flavours have gained popularity and allowed Buon Ma Thuot's coffees to enter high-end markets, including the EU and the US.
Le Dinh Tu, owner of the Aeroco Coffee Farm in Buon Ma Thuot who has won prizes in the Vietnam Amazing Cup for five consecutive years, said his nine-hectare organic coffee farm is developed based on a multi-layered ecosystem, including the overstory layer, the understory layer, the coffee layer, and the ground layer.
The four-layer approach, coupled with a strict management process, has enabled Aeroco to yield coffee beans of high quality and aromatic flavours.
Aeroco coffee has found its way to export high-quality and specialty coffee to the EU, the US, Canada, China, and Japan.
Tu underlined the necessity to design a specific roadmap and harmonious mechanism, and have large financial resources to finance training and experience-sharing programmes for farmers to turn Buon Ma Thuot into a global hub for specialty coffees.
Sharing Tu’s opinions, Tran Dinh Trong, Director of the Ea Tu Fair Agricultural Service Cooperative, said his 49-member entity has 320 ha of coffee farms.
In recent years, the cooperative has developed specialty and high-quality coffee products, which have been welcomed in many markets worldwide. This shows that Dal Lak coffee is good enough to win on its flavours even with the most discerning of markets, Trong said.
Trinh Duc Minh, Chairman of the Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Association, revealed that specialty coffees are referred to as "gourmet art" by coffee connoisseurs for their uniqueness from production to preparation.
The global hub for specialty coffees can be built on the following pillars: a city of the best Robusta coffee in the world, a city of coffee festivals, and a centre for coffee research, education, training, science and technology on coffee, storage and development of coffee genetic resources, Minh said.
