During the event, experts highlighted the potential for Vietnam’s tea products to access the US market thanks to the country’s long-lasting history of tea growing. 

According to Peter Goggi, President of the US Tea Association, the US is a potential market for Vietnam’s tea products, but it requires high standards of quality and cooking safety.

Participants said Vietnam’s green tea producers should join value chains and use more technologies in producing and processing to improve the quality of tea products for export to satisfy tough markets like the US. 

Vietnamese tea firms were also advised to pay more attention to building their brands. The tea industry has provided jobs to more than 354,000 Vietnamese farmers, significantly contributing to rural development and poverty reduction. 

Vietnam is one of the seven leading tea producers and fifth biggest tea exporter in the world and boasts a total area of 124,000 ha for growing tea, producing 500,000 tonnes of dry tea each year.

Currently, a group of Vietnamese tea enterprises are being assisted to access markets in North America through a competitiveness improvement programme funded by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland.

Addressing the seminar, Ambassador Nguyen Phuong Nga, head of the Permanent Vietnamese Mission to the United Nations, hailed Vietnamese tea firms that won awards at an international tea competition in Canada last year.

The awards helped create prestige for the country’s tea industry in the international market, contributing to building the national trademark for Vietnam’s tea, she said.