Witnessing ups and downs of cashew trees in the past time, Le Quang Luyen, founder and president of Phuc An Co., Ltd, understands the value of cashew trees more than anyone else. Although Binh Phuoc province is known as the capital of the cashew industry, he found that the value cashew trees brought to local people remained low.

There are many reasons for this situation but one of the main reasons, according to Luyen, is Binh Phuoc is the capacity of cashew processing industry. As the cradle of the cashew processing industry Binh Phuoc province is home to many processing companies but most of them have small capacity and simply process the nuts due to backward facilities and low labour productivity. In recent years, cashew processing technologies have much developed but many companies dare not to make bold investment decisions to enhance their competencies.

Having a true passion for cashew trees and being aware of market development trends in the context of integration, Luyen always wants to soon establish a modern production process to turn out quality products to meet strictest market requirements and most demanding customers. Therefore, he started to plan a well-furnished cashew processing plant on an area of 3.2 ha, which has all facilities from processors and drying yards to worker accommodations. This also means that he has to spend a lot of initial capital but, in his opinion, infrastructure investment is a must to do good business in the long term.

Having heard a lot about the Phuc An cashew nut processing factory, the author of this story was still amazed at its modernity and methodology when visiting. Well-equipped facilities, modern equipment and strict professional production processes are what he could feel as soon as he entered the factory. All is executed in a self-contained process, from input processing to product finishing.

Engineer Vu Manh Tung, Quality Assurance Director, who is directly responsible for product quality and who was sent by Phuc An to many training courses lectured by foreign experts, including American experts, before taking on the operation of the plant, said, in order to have a complete quality product for export, it must undergo a lot of stages processed by modern machines. “Inputs are brought to nut-size separators. Then, big, medium and small sized nuts are conveyed to steaming systems and then into modern cooling systems. Later, they are transported to nut crackers and undergone colour testers which will get rid of substandard ones. After this, cashew nuts are put into the drying system and the heating system. After this time, they are peeled off silk cover and disinfected before finalisation,” he said.

A lot of modern machinery fascinates persons without much relation to the cashew industry like us. We are most impressed with Dutch disinfection technology (costing over VND10 billion) with the processing capacity of 64 tonnes in four kilns. In particular, this technology does not use any chemical but CO2 gas to naturally remove parasites on products, thus perfectly ensuring food safety and export criteria for the most demanding markets worldwide.

Thus far, the Phuc An cashew nut processing factory is the most modern in Vietnam and one of the most modern processing plants in the world. Even customers and partners from high standard markets such as Europe and the United States are surprised at the modernity and completely satisfied with product quality of the factory.

Technological investment is essential but hardly any other policies dare to do so in a volatile market. Besides, many do not want to change their routine operations. This is a strong drag on the sector development.

Mr Le Quang Luyen said that businesses should boldly invest in technological innovation and product quality improvement because they will find it harder to access demanding markets in the current context of competition. If they are late to change, they will be left behind. To be qualified for exporting products to the European market and particularly the US market, enterprises have to undergo stringent inspections. For example, to export a container of cashew nuts to the US, representatives from the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) go to their production facilities to perform very meticulous sampling. Sometimes, we send our engineers to assist other peers,” he said.

It is obvious that it costs a lot to invest in new know-how and applying modern technologies to production. For Le Quang Luyen, the outcome of that investment is very great. As for productivity, if Phuc An continued to use old technology, it would need up to 600 employees. But, with this current factory equipped with modern automated lines, the company needs just 100 workers to do the same job, a reduction of 80 per cent of manpower. Increased productivity and reduced labour cost enable the company reduce production costs, enhance competition and ease management processes.

Modern factory and high quality products also enable the company to quote higher prices. Most foreign customers are happy when they visit the Phuc An factory. They are also willing to buy products in a greater quantity and at a higher price. Many of Phuc An products are sold very well although they are US$2 per kilo higher than their competitors. Indeed, the current capacity of the company is not enough to fulfil all orders from customers. A container of cashew nuts now brings thousands of US dollars more for the company, and it will be a big sum in a month when more companies are sold. For that reason, a modern production facility will bring a lot of advantages for the company. It takes four years to take back our huge initial investment, Luyen shared.

Apart from applying new technologies to production, the company pays particular attention to enhancing reputation. Luyen said, product quality and prestige are core factors of a company’s success. Customers will find us when we have these features. Prestige is resulted from quality, not by people.

Taking technology, product quality and reputation as the foundation, Phuc An has proven that this is a right way to go. Hopefully, the success of Phuc An will become a source of inspiration for its peers to invest more for well-arranged production to strengthen the development of the cashew industry of Binh Phuoc province in particular and of Vietnam in general to new heights with more values added.
N.Nga