Brochure created by Fresh Studio for METRO Vietnam Fish sourcing project …
+ METRO Vietnam Fish sourcing brochure (7,0 MB)
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Source: Fresh Studio
Language: English
Publication date: June 2012Also interesting to read:
MOC CHAU – Fresh Studio and Applied Plant Research of Wageningen UR are working on vegetable trials in the Moc Chau area since 2007, and recently Fresh Studio joined a team of local and international experts from a range of aid and development organizations to improve the market engagement for counter-seasonal vegetable producers in Moc Chau..
Urban consumers in North Vietnam encounter problems buying guaranteed safe vegetables especially during the hot and humid summer period in North Vietnam which starts in April and lasts until September. Because temperatures and humidity are too high in the Red River Delta plains to produce the required range of vegetables and there is limited supply of vegetables from Dalat from April to September, markets in North Vietnam are flooded with vegetables imported from China. This concerns consumers and government regulators due to questionable food safety standards.
The climatic advantage of the cooler mountains of Moc Chau, Son La province, an area 4-5 hours from Hanoi is used to develop a regional solution to supplement the vegetable supply from the Red River Delta during the summer period.
+ Download the article “New vegetable hub under development for Vietnam”
+ Download the article “Putting Moc Chau farmers on the map”
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Source: AsiaFruit Magazine
Publication date: May 2012 / April 2013Also interesting to read:
DALAT – After hard work by our North Vietnam vegetable sourcing project team, the vegetable supply from smallholders in both the mountains in North Vietnam as well from the Red River lowlands has begun.
Over 18 different vegetables are being produced under a private GAP standard by one of Fresh Studio’s clients. These vegetables also comply with the Vietnamese national safe vegetable certificates. Besides being a safe product, vegetables from kohlrabi to lettuce (such as lollo green, lollo red, romaine, cucumber, radish, and kang kong) are of a much higher standard than those available before. Soon, a professional vegetable packing house will be launched, after which sourcing volumes and numbers of farmers involved can rapidly increase.
HANOI – Rapid economic development, urbanisation and rising income levels, in Vietnam offer potential for pro-poor development, by creating new market opportunities for producers, traders and retailers. This article describes the process of value chain development, which involves all actors in the broad chain of avocado.
The project
Dak Lak, a province in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, is an important coffee producing area. Many poor ethnic minorities are engaged in coffee farming. Their dependence on coffee cultivation only at a time of decreasing coffee prices made income diversification an urgent necessity. Dak Lak area is also known for producing the best quality avocados in Vietnam. Because avocado trees are grown within coffee plantations to provide shade, and because demand for avocado was growing, avocado was defined as a potential crop to diversify the coffee dominated agricultural sector in Dak Lak. Avocado was also considered because of its high nutritional value and its potential to improve the poor-quality diet of the local rural communities, and of children in particular.
This product choice was made in cooperation with local research institutions and local farmers. The aim of the intervention plan was to create a professional value chain for avocado, in which the different chain actors cooperate to supply consistent quality avocados to urban sales channels across Vietnam. The objectives were to: (1) create a professional avocado chain; (2) increase awareness of and demand for avocado (avocado is relatively unknown in Vietnam and consumers are not familiar with its nutritional values and its uses); (3) develop a high quality avocado brand.
+ Download the complete article
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Source: Urban Agriculture magazine
Publication date: September 2010Also interesting to read:
VIETNAM – Growing domestic demand has been a saving grace for Vietnam’s economy during the recent global downturn, and similar trends towards self-reliance are emerging in the fruit business.
Make no mistake: the global financial crisis had a true negative impact on Vietnam’s economy. A review of 2009 by market research firm TNS Vietnam shows that while GDP rose 5.32 per cent, exports fell by 10 per cent, FDI dropped by a whopping 70 per cent and tourism slumped by 14 per cent.
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Source: AsiaFruit magazine
Publication date: June 2010Also interesting to read:
HANOI – Sigrid Wertheim-Heck of Fresh Studio discusses a new organic vegetable initiative in Northern Vietnam, which marketed its first product in Hanoi at the end of May.
Please can you give us some background information to your organic production and marketing efforts in northern Vietnam?
Sigrid: The ADDA VNFU Organic Project in Northern Vietnam, initiated by the Danish NGO ADDA, has been operational since 2004. The activities were at first mainly focused on training farmers in organic cultivation methods. Although these activities delivered some nice organic supply initiatives, the actual organic supply chain remained limited to direct home delivery sales on a very small scale.
+ Download the complete article
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Source: AsiaFruit Magazine
Publication date: June 2010Also interesting to read:
HANOI – Vietnamese consumers have a passion for brands and a pride in local produce, factors that can be exploited by the country’s increasingly professional fruit sector.
Riding on my motorbike through the streets of Hanoi, it’s always a joy to behold how much Vietnamese people love brands: the bigger the better, and no matter whether they’re fake and misspelled or real and expensive, brands leap out from chests and backs, phones and bags.
The Western lifestyle is an aspiration here, and over the past few years I have seen Vietnam transform itself into the ‘Fast Brand Nation’ with the assumption that the best is coming from the west. But is that always true? And does it also apply in the case of fresh produce? Not necessarily so.
+ Download the complete column
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Source: AsiaFruit Magazine
Publication date: May 2010Also interesting to read:
HANOI – For one of our clients, a multi-disciplinary team (an agronomist, post-harvest and business development specialists) from the Fresh Studio Hanoi office is currently undertaking a sector study of the booming Vietnamese gherkin sector.
This young sector, which first started its exports in 2000, is proving to be internationally very competitive, and is growing rapidly. Fresh Studio aims to play a leading role in professionalizing this sector, which provides higher incomes for smallholders, with often less than 0.5 hectares of land, and requires large number of workers in gherkin processing factories.Also interesting to read:
HCMC – Vietnam is rapidly emerging as the next major market opportunity for the fresh fruit and vegetable business in Asia.
This much was very clear from last week’s Fresh Produce Vietnam, the first-ever international produce conference in the country, which was abuzz with news and networking focused on its exciting potential.
The three-day event, which met from 2-4 April in Ho Chi Minh City, attracted more than 150 delegates from 20 different countries, reflecting the global interest in Vietnam’s potential both as a supplier and as a consumer market.
Opening the conference, Dinh Van Huong, chairman of Vinafruit, outlined the government’s ambitious targets to boost fruit production from 7m tonnes to 10m tonnes by 2010 and to more than double export revenues to US$760m in the same period.
Dr Ngyuen Minh Chau of the Southern Fruit Research Institute pointed out that Vietnam’s capacity to supply a wide range of tropical and temperate fruits on a near year-round basis is a distinct advantage. The industry still faces major hurdles to fulfilling its potential, most notably the fragmented supply base of smallholders, he said, but two dragonfruit producers gained EurepGAP certification in 2006/07 and the launch of VietGAP this year should provide more suppliers with a platform to reach such standards.
Vietnam has also seen competition from China and Thailand intensify since free trade deals in 2003, and HortResearch’s Dr Michael Lay-Yee and Rabobank’s Brady Sidwell both underlined that the export market opportunity for Vietnam is focused on high-value products.
Vietnam’s burgeoning consumer market is also driving quality standards among local producers, and delegates heard how retailers like Metro Cash & Carry are helping to improve the supply chain by working directly with farmers.
Demand for imported fruits is also rising rapidly, and Vanguard’s Craig Stauffer said Vietnam represents a “phenomenal growth opportunity” with the scope to expand by 15-20 per cent annually. While the market opportunity for global suppliers has predominantly focused on a high-end niche to date, it is poised to become much bigger as tariffs are reduced, the economy forges ahead and modern food retail with refrigerated vending takes off, heard delegates.
The modern retail trade is still “very underdeveloped” in Vietnam compared with other countries in the region, according to The Nielsen Company’s Susan McDonald. Its share of total retail sales amounts to around 10 per cent, but it grew by 45 per cent last year with 72 new stores opened, and the modern trade could grab a 25 per cent share by 2010 as the market is set to open to 100 per cent foreign investment next year, she noted.
When it comes to buying fruit and vegetables, the wet market is still the preferred destination for Vietnamese consumers who tend to shop on a daily basis for fresh produce. Sigrid Wertheim-Heck of Fresh Studio Innovations Asia also highlighted deep and mounting food safety concerns among consumers following health scares. “They are very scared but have a low trust of guidance systems, and this shows the paradoxical consumer we’re dealing with,” she noted.
+ Read article on FreshPlaza.com
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Source: FreshPlaza.com
Publication date: Oktober 2008
Also interesting to read:
DALAT – As part of the MSc Management, Economics and Consumer Studies at Wageningen University, I conducted an internship at Fresh Studio in Dalat, Vietnam.
My assignment for this internship was to conduct a market research on the seed sector of Lam Dong Province, the province where Dalat is located.
Internship
The area of Dalat is well known for growing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, thanks to the altitude and climate. As part of a project to introduce new vegetable varieties in Vietnam for one of Fresh Studio’s clients, I conducted a survey on the nursery sector in Lam Dong. Nurseries are greenhouses where seeds are grown into seedlings after which the seedlings are sold and transported to farmers.
My internship was a nice combination of field and office work. I conducted a survey and follow-up in-depth interviews with the owners of the nurseries and combined the insights into a final report on the seed/nursery sector of Lam Dong Province and the potential for seed sales per vegetable type for one of Fresh Studio’s clients.
About Fresh Studio
Fresh Studio is a young and developing company with passionate, professional, and committed people. I had the opportunity to not only learn from my own project, but also from the projects on which my colleagues were working. Activities ranged from the sourcing of vegetables for a large modern retailer, R&D for agriculture input providers and marketing of avocados in the traditional and modern retail outlets of Vietnam. The open and positive working atmosphere at Fresh Studio made me feel ‘at home’ very quickly.
Choice for Fresh Studio
Multinational companies always appealed to me and so it was an atypical choice for me to undertake my internship within a relatively small company as Fresh Studio. However, I have not regretted this choice, as Fresh Studio is a professional and well-organized company which provided a great learning environment.
Preparation
Before my departure to Vietnam, I arranged the visa, flight ticket and required vaccinations. Next to providing work-related facilities, Fresh Studio arranged my accommodation and covered my expenses.
Looking back
My four month period in Vietnam enriched my life. I experienced the Fresh Studio way of doing business, worked in a professional organization, in a sector which appeals to me very much, in a country that is not only beautiful, but is also economically booming.
Moreover, being part of the Fresh Studio ‘family’, experiencing the Vietnamese culture and traveling in Vietnam and Cambodia after my internship made it an experience I will never forget.Also interesting to read:
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