Vietnam designates December 10 as Coffee Day

Luong Van Tu, chair of the Association made the announcement at a recent press conference noting that the intent is to mark the great contributions made by the coffee industry to the country’s economic development.

The Association chose the date of December 10 to celebrate in remembrance of the visit of President Ho Chi Minh to the Dong Hieu Coffee Farm in Nghe An Province on that date back in 1961.

A seminar on the future of the coffee industry will be organized on the margins of the event at which an announcement of the country’s most prestigious coffee producing and processing companies will be made.

The Association will also hold a coffee promotion and enjoyment cultural festival at the same venue – the Youth Cultural House – running December 9-11 to promote coffee consumption, he added.

He noted that Vietnam is the globe’s second largest coffee grower holding a 15% market share and that it has been forecast that gross revenue from coffee exports in 2016 will jump by more than US$300 million year-on-year to US$3.7 billion.

The coffee industry has given effect to a restructuring program to improve its competitiveness by raising productivity, quality and value and now has an area of 600,000ha under coffee cultivation and is focused on planting new trees with higher productivity and quality, said Mr Tu.

The industry will work diligently to increase the export of processed coffee to achieve yet higher revenues of from US$5-US$6 billion by 2030, he underscored.

Mr Do Ha Nam, the Association’s deputy chair, in turn said Asia and Africa are lucrative markets for Vietnamese coffee and exporters are setting their sights on these markets with high expectations of making inroads into these markets.

China, he noted, has a high demand for coffee and many Vietnamese companies like Trung Nguyen and Vinacafe have achieved a limited degree of success in the market, which holds great promise for expanded sales in the future.