Buon Ma Thuot city is a place where each cup of coffee is not only a drink, but also serves as a part of the unique culture of daily life. The city is making great efforts to become a coffee city of the world boasting distinctive identities.

In fact, apart from investing in upgrading infrastructure, the locality, residents, and businesses have all exerted relentless efforts to improve the value of Vietnamese coffee in the future.

A special school in the coffee city

Nguyen Thi Binh, a coffee entrepreneur in Hanoi, has a roasting factory and a chain of coffee shops. She gets involved in coffee workshops and conducts field trips to various coffee regions across the country.

However, she shares that attending a high-quality coffee processing class organised by the Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Association is something she has always longed for.

After missing out on several opportunities to register for the class, her long-awaited wish finally came true as the association restarted the training classes in November.

"I wanted to join the training course for a long time but when I registered for the class last year, it was full. This year, I registered very early and studied right from the first course," Binh says.

The training course opened in the raw material area of ​​Coffee Company 15 in Cu M'Gar district, which is the most productive and high-quality robusta region in Dak Lak province.

During the four-day course, Binh and 25 learners experienced selecting ripe red coffee beans themselves, drying, roasting, grounding, and  making a cup of coffee, as well as enjoying them amidst the the sunshine of the highlands.

"I am currently addicted to making coffee in the Central Highlands. When the coffee season comes, I just want to go to the locality to pick coffee, wash, dry, process, and ferment it in all kinds of ways,” she remarks.

Meanwhile, Trinh Duc Minh, chairman of the Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Association, says that the launch of training courses has been the association’s priority for a long time.

However, since the association was assigned by the Dak Lak Provincial People's Committee to be in charge of a specialty coffee project in 2019, it has begun to arrange specialised training courses on coffee.

With the support of the association’s members, who are leading businesses and experts in the industry, training courses have been designed to link to real coffee production regions or coffee gardens worth hundreds of billions of VND, all of which are ideal places for both teaching and practicing activities.

With a training model of "from farm to cup", after nearly six years, the association has developed a Vietnam Amazing ecosystem for coffee, including national competitions such as Vietnam Amazing Roast Master, a coffee roasting competition, Vietnam Amazing Cup, a contest on Vietnam specialty coffee and Brewing Master, and a coffee brewing competition.

Through this ecosystem, Vietnamese coffee industry has developed world-class quality products that have been certified by prestigious international awards.

Most recently, Vietnamese Robusta coffee surpassed 8,000 entries from other countries to win in five award categories at the "Odjeta Swan Cup 2024" competition which was held in China.

Furthermore, Vietnamese Robusta coffee was also recognised as one of the top 3 Robusta coffees of the year and listed among the top 10 most cost-effective Robusta coffees, as well as in the list of the top 10 recommended Robusta coffees and "Robusta with special flavor".

"There are still many goals that we need to achieve moving forward," says Minh, noting that the association has mapped out a plan to fulfil the targets through setting up a very close-knit specialty coffee community with tens of thousands of people in all segments of the value chain.

Towards the goal "a coffee city of the world"

Last year can be considered a success for the coffee industry, with domestic selling prices being above VND100 million per tonne and total export turnover reaching more than US$5 billion.

Le Duc Huy, vice president of the Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Association, said there remains challenges ahead as the coffee cultivation area and output continued to decrease significantly in the 2023 - 2024 crop.

Huy analyses that Vietnam is known as one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of coffee. As investors are keen to find sources of goods or partners, they will select the leading nations in the field first. 

If an appropriate policy is not made, then Vietnam is predicted to slip from the number one position, leading to numerous disadvantages, he notes.

“Unique mindset” to help Buon Ma Thuot turn into a coffee city of the world

In fact, the "unique mindset" is creeping in and increasingly leading the pioneering actions of the coffee community in the city, a factor which will help Buon Ma Thuot become a worldwide coffee city in the future.

With this mindset, Buon Ma Thuot has a "coffee village", a world coffee museum, a coffee-themed real estate complex, and a coffee festival, all of which has opened up opportunities for elevating coffee culture and creating high-quality and specialty products, as well as pioneering the practice of large-scale circular coffee.

Simexco Dak Lak, a state-owned enterprise run by Huy has also become the first company in the world to build large coffee material areas that have granted certification to meet the EU’s anti-deforestation standards.

Moreover, it is also the only firm in the country whose green coffee products have been recognised as a “national brand” and the first company to officially export specialty coffee.

Most notably, farmers and enterprises in the locality have effectively cooperated to create a model of intercropping durian - pepper for export and turning pure coffee gardens into a multi-layered agricultural ecosystem, which in turn has seen a 10-fold rise in economic value. 

This model has been replicated throughout the Central Highlands, opening up a wealth of opportunities for villages to get rich.

Despite numerous difficulties ahead, Buon Ma Thuot city is confident that it will be able to realise its big dream, not only to be the coffee capital of Vietnam, but also to be a coffee city of the world, where the cultural quintessence and identities are promoted.
 

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