HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam’s cashew industry would need to restructure production andprocessing in order to ensure enough raw materials for sustainable development,according to experts.

In a restructuringprogramme of the cashew industry, scientists have suggested that cashew growingregions with trees more than 20 years old needed to plant new varieties thatwere more productive and resistant to pests.

Minister of Agriculture andRural Development Nguyen Xuan Cuong said the restructuring of the cashewindustry must be carried out comprehensively. Specifically, productivity mustincrease by 50 percent. The production process should be developed followingorganic standards

For increased cashewproductivity, Nguyen Thanh Phuong, Deputy Director of the Agricultural ScienceInstitute for Southern Coastal Central of Vietnam (ASISOV), said manyvarieties of cashews had been tested and trial production had resulted in highproductivity.

These varieties had beenrecognised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and puton mass production. After five years of cultivation, output had reached morethan 1.5 tonnes per ha with high quality, Phuong said.

The Vietnam Cashew Associationhas also asked MARD to cooperate with Cambodia to develop cashew production,providing raw material for the domestic processing industry.

The Cambodian Ministry ofAgriculture, Forestry and Fishery has approved a 500,000ha cashew area to bedeveloped by a Vietnamese firm. The plantation is expected to supply onemillion tonnes of raw materials to Vietnamese enterprises each year.

In addition, the sector hasalso focused on intensive processing and improving the value of cashew nuts,while the Vietnam Cashew Association has been building an international brandfor export purposes.

Cuong said the industryshould apply scientific and technological advances for production to solve theimpacts of bad weather on production.

Cashew processingenterprises have already formed a production chain in association with localauthorities and cashew farmers under a co-operative model. This providedstability to all parties to develop the domestic and export markets.

According to MARD, theprocessing capacity of Vietnam’s cashew industry stood at 1.8 million tonnes ofraw cashew per year, of which intensively-processed products accounted forabout 20 percent of total exports.

This domestic supply of rawmaterials for processing is not enough so processors must import from Africancountries. However, some African countries are planning to process their ownnuts to improve the value of their product.

Cuong said the local cashewindustry had to import 70 percent of raw materials for processing.  

Vietnam has 480 cashewprocessing plants and 20 percent of them have intensive processing chains.

According to the Ministryof Industry and Trade, as of October 15 this year, cashew nut exports reached286,000 tonnes, earning 2.7 billion USD, up 4.8 percent in volume but down 1.8 percentin value year on year.

The decline in value waspartly due to a decrease of 5.8 percent in average export prices in the firstnine months to 8,611 USD per tonne.

Vietnam’s cashew nuts havebeen exported to markets such as the US, China, the Netherlands, Germany andCanada.-VNS/VNA